Victors in Grad School
Dr. Christopher Lewis
Victors in Grad School explores what you can do to find success in your own graduate school journey no matter what you plan to do. Through experts and individual interviews you will be introduced to what it means to find success and tips on achieving success in graduate school.
Episodes
Balance and Boundaries: Thriving in Graduate School
Navigating graduate school is a rewarding but often challenging journey, filled with competing demands on your time, energy, and emotional wellness. In the episode "Finding Support and Setting Boundaries" from the Victors in Grad School podcast, Dr. Christopher Lewis is joined by Reilly Chabie, a counselor and outreach coordinator with Counseling and Psychological Services at the University of Michigan Flint, to break down what it truly means to find balance and set effective boundaries as a grad student. Reilly Chabie brings her expertise and a compassionate approach to guide listeners through understanding the unique pressures faced during graduate studies. She introduces the concept of the 8 dimensions of wellness – a holistic framework that includes emotional, physical, financial, environmental, spiritual, and other domains – and emphasizes how each area shifts in importance depending on one's priorities. When one area falters, others can quickly follow, making self-awareness and attentiveness to balance absolutely vital. A central theme in this episode is the reality of imbalance and burnout. Reilly Chabie normalizes these experiences, discussing how burnout can affect not only our physical health but also our mental clarity, motivation, and relationships. She reminds us that recognizing the signs of burnout early is crucial to resetting and rediscovering a sustainable equilibrium. The heart of Reilly Chabie's message is actionable: cultivate self-compassion and understand that balance is not a one-size-fits-all process. She encourages listeners to use self-checks to measure where their balance lies and adapt accordingly. Through tools like the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding method and the practice of radical acceptance, students can regain presence and reduce overwhelm. Setting boundaries, a pivotal skill discussed in detail, is positioned as an act of kindness both to oneself and to those around us. Reilly Chabie walks through practical steps: define your personal limits, communicate them clearly, and reinforce them consistently—whether with friends, professors, or even yourself. The message is empowering: it's OK to say no, and even more, it's necessary for long-term success and well-being. If you're embarking on or searching for ways to thrive in graduate school, this episode is packed with expert advice, relatable stories, and practical tools. Tune in to hear how Dr. Christopher Lewis and Reilly Chabie tackle common struggles and provide resources and reassurance to help you maintain your balance (and sanity!) throughout your academic journey. Ready to reclaim your grad school experience? Listen now to "Finding Support and Setting Boundaries" on Victors in Grad School. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome everyone. I'm Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs here at the University of Michigan Flint. I am so excited to welcome you and to— I'm so excited for you to start your graduate school journey. Today we've got a really important topic, and I know I say that every time, but it is true. This is another really important topic. Today we have a new friend with us that is going to be talking about another important topic. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:37]: Reilly Chaby is with us, and Reilly is talking about the importance of finding support and setting boundaries. Where is that limit for yourself and being able to set those limits for you and for other people that know you? Because it's not just you. You have to be able to set the limits to be able to set those parameters for yourself to be able to be successful in graduate school. And Reilly's going to be talking to you about that. So I'm really excited to have her here. I'm gonna turn it over to her. Reilly, thanks so much for being here. Reilly Chabie [00:01:05]: Welcome in. I am grateful to be here. Thank you for the introduction, Dr. Lewis. As he mentioned, my name is Reilly Chaby. I am one of the CAPS counselors and the outreach coordinator for Counseling and Psychological Services. And as mentioned, I'm here to talk to you today about really finding that balance as you are a grad student here at U of M Flint, because we have a lot going on in our personal lives, in our work lives, in our school lives. So we're gonna talk a little bit about what to consider, how to notice when you feel out of balance in certain aspects, although I'm sure we already do to some respect. Reilly Chabie [00:01:39]: And I'm going to give you some tips and ideas on how you can kind of maintain that balance while you're here pursuing your degree. What I'm going to be talking to you about applies to all of our experiences. And the unique part about this is that we're going to talk about that individual experience, right? So I appreciate you interacting and kind of telling me a little bit about where you're at. And I'm hoping that Any part of this conversation today will be applicable to your experience. So quickly, I'm just going to kind of go over some of the things that we're going to talk about. So first and foremost, I'm going to do a little bit of an introduction on the 8 dimensions of wellness. This is a huge factor in U of M Flint's focus on health and utilize the 8 dimensions of wellness to really create and supplement the outreach events that we have and the things that are there for your use as you are part of this process. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that and how that applies to balance. Reilly Chabie [00:02:34]: We're going to talk about balance itself. What does that mean? What does it feel like to be unbalanced? Those types of things. And then we're going to talk a little bit about those tips and tricks as well. We're also going to shift into a particular type of approach that can really help in maintaining balance, and that's going to focus on boundaries. So what are boundaries, examples of boundaries, and tips on how we want to engage with those. And then in summary, we'll talk about just some general last thoughts, some resources on campus, and a couple of things that CAPS has going on that you might want to partake in as you start your journey here at U of M Flint. So getting started on the 8 dimensions of wellness, as you can see here, this is a very excellent depiction of the different areas that we can kind of break our wellness down into, right? So we have our emotional wellness, physical wellness, financial wellness. We're even considering environmental wellness, right? Spiritual wellness. Reilly Chabie [00:03:33]: And all of these different parts of the puzzle or slices of the pie, if you will, impact us differently depending on what area we feel like we want to move toward, or I guess better be better acquainted with, right? So for example, I might focus heavily on my emotional wellness, right? And that kind of makes sense as a clinician, I might be focused pretty heavily on that. But for some of you folks that are focused on starting your program you might focus on maybe your intellectual wellness, right? Maybe it's your financial wellness. We all kind of prioritize these different pieces in different ways. But what's really core to the 8 dimensions of wellness is that all of these parts serve the whole person. And what we tend to notice is that when one area of the dimensions of wellness is faltering or we're struggling to kind of maintain some consistency with it, we notice that other areas start to kind of stress and ultimately suffer as we try to navigate some of the other areas. Now, it's gonna be normal for our approach to focus in one area over the other, prioritize one area over the other, just depending on the situations that we have in life. But what's really kind of critical is we wanna be mindful of when we're giving too much attention in one place and how that ultimately is affecting the other areas of our wellness. Ultimately, as we kind of look through the rest of our conversation, you might, in the back of your head, start to think about, oh, as I'm, let's say, in October of my program, I'm realizing that my physical health and my wellness there is not doing it. Reilly Chabie [00:05:23]: I'm really struggling with this and I have had a hard time taking care of that, which ultimately might lead to challenges in, let's say, your intellectual or environmental health, depending on what we prioritize and what we need to focus on. So keep that in mind and kind of think about this wheel a little bit as we go through the rest of our, our conversation, simply because we want to make sure that you know what areas you want to focus on, and that will likely help you consider what resources on campus you'll likely want access to, or at least keep in mind as you keep moving forward. So Let's consider balance. As I mentioned, we talked a little bit about how those 8 dimensions of wellness, if we're paying attention to them and kind of engaging in them and moving toward them in some way, we're typically creating some sort of balance in the process. However, balance shifts. It can kind of go up and down. It just depends on what the situation is. But I want to take a second and I want you to think about The types of responsibilities and roles that you have in your life. Reilly Chabie [00:06:33]: Now, I'll point out a couple of basic ones. You're going to be a student. You're likely a friend. Maybe you're a significant other. Maybe you're an employee. There's lots of different roles that we take on. I don't know if other people have thoughts on their roles. I always like to mention that I'm a dog parent or I'm a cat parent. Reilly Chabie [00:06:52]: I can insert other various roles that are unique to my experience that I am regularly engaging in. That I regularly pay attention to and I try to prioritize. But if we take that into this context, all of those different roles require a certain amount of energy and focus and dedication, all of the responsibilities that fall underneath that. So as a dog parent, I'm likely, I gotta remember to buy food, I gotta feed him, I gotta walk him, I gotta do all of those things. So the role itself is just an umbrella concept, and then we have to lay out all of those different types of responsibilities. You might be thinking then, okay, so if I have all of those things that I am responsible for, I'm likely going to start to feel out of balance if I feel like certain responsibilities are kind of taking control over other responsibilities. So because we have all of these different roles going on, we might experience that imbalance. I am curious, and feel free to answer in the chat, but why do we think personally it's hard to manage and balance all of these different roles and responsibilities, even if we've been doing it for a really long time? What types of things might impact that? The responsibilities never stop, so we never feel like we're getting a break. Reilly Chabie [00:08:17]: We're feeling like there are certain things outside of our control that we can't really control, right? So that can ultimately impact that time. Absolutely. As a grad student myself, I remember I almost had zero time to do anything other than school half the time. Energy levels, absolutely. All of those things are going to be fluctuating as we take on these different responsibilities and as we try to adjust to this new role in our program. Some other things we might notice in terms of what we are struggling with in terms of balance is perhaps, but some of the things that we might experience might be that one of those roles or responsibilities are expecting too much, right? There is too much of a demand. There is too much of that that I need to take care of. Another thing we might notice, which definitely aligns with the imposter syndrome experience, is we set unrealistic expectations for ourselves in trying to balance these things or trying to take on these additional roles. Reilly Chabie [00:09:16]: That could come from a variety of different ways, but as grad students, you might have this expectation that You are being held to this higher standard. There is more to be expected of you. And while to some degree academically that might be true in the sense that your program is specialized or is going to focus more in depth than maybe some of your undergraduate experience, we too ultimately set too high of an expectation that we are going to meet all of our demands all of the time, 100% of the time. But unfortunately, what that leads to is we are thinking that we are striving for perfection here. And there's that age-old saying, nothing can really ever reach a perfect space, right? Nothing is perfect. But we can think about what perfect actually means to us and how that relates back to our balance. So take in mind some of these things about balance because it'll be helpful in trying to maybe gauge how we want to approach rebalancing our life and making sure that we're able to meet the demands of what we're experiencing, but also knowing when it's too much, right? Or also knowing when we have to manage our expectations to be able to fit in what is most important to us. So now that we've considered some of the potential ways in which our balance can be impacted, or the specific aspects in which we're trying to look at when we think of balance, I think it's also helpful to kind of discuss what specifically we're experiencing or feeling as imbalance occurs. Reilly Chabie [00:11:01]: And I'm sure many of you have heard the word before, but burnout tends to be our biggest worry when we think about imbalance, right? That if we are really engaging in one area, we might feel burnt out to the point where we can't engage in other areas. Some of you mentioned energy, right? Burnout does impact our energy levels. It impacts so many different aspects. And I think it's helpful to, while this slide doesn't really give you an exhaustive list, it's helpful to kind of look at some of the ways in which burnout shows up for you. So for example, physically, burnout might show up as high blood pressure. We might get recurring headaches. We might struggle to fall asleep, stay asleep, or even get up sometimes. Stomachaches are very common. Reilly Chabie [00:11:52]: They say that There's an emotional center in our stomachs, which is why a lot of people tend to have GI issues when they're anxious or worried or concerned about things. You might also recognize that with increased stress comes a decrease in immune function, so we might actually be getting sick more frequently. And I'm not necessarily talking about if you have a chronic condition, but if you're generally otherwise pretty healthy, you might experience more colds or be susceptible to other types of illnesses. So it can definitely impact our physical process here. It also is going to impact our mental and emotional experiences. Once again, not an exhaustive list, but if we are experiencing burnout, we are likely going to experience some concentration difficulties. So that might be on your homework, that might be on certain work aspects if you are working during the same time as your degree, could be in various other roles. We might forget things more regularly. Reilly Chabie [00:12:53]: We're going to notice maybe low mood where we're just generally feeling down, generally just kind of feeling disconnected. We might notice a loss of interest in some of your favorite things or things that typically have brought you joy. We might feel like we're falling behind, even if we're technically right on par. Sometimes we just have that feeling that we should catch up or should be doing more. And a lot of the time when we're experiencing burnout, all of these symptoms and concerns lead to this sense of feeling stuck. I personally, when I'm experiencing burnout, I tend to feel like very run down. I get headaches pretty regularly. I'm very tired. Reilly Chabie [00:13:32]: A lot of those things start to come up. And I also tend to isolate from people, right? I don't feel like I have that energy to engage or the energy to show up in ways that are meaningful to me or to those around me. And that likely is due to that burnout and that feeling of overwhelm that I have too much going on at any given point. So once again, these signs are helpful to consider because one, you may have already experienced them, which is a good indication that we've experienced burnout. But when you start to notice these pop up either more intensely, more frequently, maybe out of characteristically, where like maybe every once in a while you get a headache, but like all of a sudden you're getting them so often that you're very confused because you're drinking water, eating well, doing all of those regular things. When those things start to happen, that's a good indicator to us that we've maybe lost balance in some way, and we can start working on some of these tips to kind of regain that balance in an aspect that feels tangible and approachable in the moment. All right. So now that we kind of have a better understanding of what balance is, you know, what might be contributing to our imbalance, and just kind of some ideas as to how we consider this balance in our own context, I do want to talk a little bit about What are some of those tips and tricks on getting toward balance? And some kind of basic things to be mindful of in this process is that achieving balance is a, is a very kind of like incremental step process. Reilly Chabie [00:15:09]: It's never going to be linear in the, in the way we feel that if we do step 1, it leads to step 2, but rather if we take one step in one direction, that means we're closer to taking another step at some point. Mm-hmm. And I think phrasing it in this way suggests that sometimes balance— we can stay consistent for long enough before we, let's say for example, improve upon an area of wellness. And that consistency helps us feel stable, supported, and gives that kind of foundational core to our experience, something that we can always rely on. And every once in a while, we take those bigger steps to more solidify our connection to our wellness and to the things that we care about. Care about in the moment. In that same mindset, balance can often be viewed as a continuum that we're kind of ebbing and flowing through that balance space. Sometimes I like to think of the balance continuum as 1 being like, I'm a complete disaster, I have no idea what's going on, to 10 being, for lack of a better term, perfectly balanced. Reilly Chabie [00:16:18]: And perfectly balanced is just whatever I deem to be balanced in that moment. Am I not feeling those signs of burnout? Do I feel like I'm able to keep my energy up? Am I able to feel connected to the people that I'm with? The things that I value in that process. So every once in a while, it might be helpful to kind of check your balance continuum, kind of see where you lie in that 1 to 10 scale, if that's helpful. But even more so, when we think about the continuum, balance is going to look different for everybody. Therefore, your approach is going to be different. That one thing isn't necessarily going to work for me as it does for you, and that's okay. Ultimately, we're just kind of trying to find that concoction that leads us to the appropriate level of balance that we need. So ultimately, why is balance even realistically important? Well, first of all, it's going to improve our mood. Reilly Chabie [00:17:16]: So if we feel like all of our kind of dimensions of wellness are taken care of and we feel relatively balanced, then we We're going to notice the pleasure in things. We're going to feel focused. We're going to feel like we're achieving what we want to achieve. We're also going to notice a higher and better quality in our relationships. So going back to that part about our roles that we hold, we might feel better about our role as a student. We might feel better satisfaction from our relationships with our significant other, our friends, our coworkers, wherever it might be at, because we're able to focus on that dimension of our wellness. And I think that's a really important point. We're also likely to just have a better enjoyment of life itself. Reilly Chabie [00:18:00]: I can't tell you how many times that during grad school it was pretty complicated to feel like everything was enjoyable around me. Like, I won't lie, we have those emotions all the time, right, where things are stressful, things are kind of getting to us. But the more we actively keep in check our balance to the best of our ability, the more likely it is that we're going to experience that enjoyment for longer periods of time, even outside of the times when we know we just cannot in the moment. That is okay. But this is why balance is key in our process as a grad student, because we respect and understand the difficulties that might come around, but we are not stuck in that difficulty if and when we do not want to be. We can access those resources and engage in ways to help us get to that balance. As we shift into kind of the tips for balance, right? Once again, I talked a little bit about the uniqueness of balance, right? That we're looking at different ways across the board that might work for you but won't work for another person in today's conversation. And ultimately, it's okay to test out as many of these as you would like, consider as many of them as you would like, and notice what works in times of high stress or what works when you're just kind of hanging out but you're noticing some of that imbalance. Reilly Chabie [00:19:20]: So feel free to kind of consider some of these things, but add what feels appropriate to you. So first and foremost, as we talk about tips for balance, I want to address a concept called self-compassion. And self-compassion is a term coined by Kristin Neff. And she defines self-compassion as the practice of being kind and understanding towards oneself when experiencing failure, inadequacy, or suffering. And I think this really sums up some of the feelings that we might have in the grad school experience. When we think about imposter syndrome, we often feel like we are inadequate in what we are trying to learn. And as a student, that can be really alarming. We can be like, well, you know, I did all of this work, I did all of the things that I felt like I was supposed to do, and I am still feeling this way. Reilly Chabie [00:20:13]: So something that we want to be mindful of is that our, our ability to say, hey, what you are doing is really hard, and it is okay to have these thoughts, these feelings, these experiences, we tend to reduce that kind of like idea that we're not allowed to feel a certain way or that we're not allowed to have uncomfortable or difficulty emotions in the process. And what we also learn is that we're able to accept that these challenges are in front of us, that we're doing the best that we can. We're trying to balance what's in front of us. And in that process, we're accepting the fact that whatever I'm trying to do now will inevitably help in some way. What we don't want is to beat ourselves up over our process. We don't want to say that we're incapable of addressing these things. It's ultimately just going to be about saying, I accept that I'm feeling this, and I'm being kind to myself in the process as I figure out how I want to take it. In line with that, we're giving ourselves the permission to kind of feel some of these negative and uncomfortable feelings. Reilly Chabie [00:21:24]: Part of self-compassion is being able to say, wow, I have a lot of emotions in this moment, and I don't really know what to do with them, and they're kind of freaking me out. But emotions are there for a reason. They remind us when things are important. They tell us that we, that we want something out of an experience, or they tell us how to survive, right? Or how to get out of of an experience. And what we, what we don't want is to shame ourselves into thinking that negative feelings automatically mean failure or bad or whatever it is, but rather, okay, I don't love that I'm feeling this negative feeling, or I'm uncomfortable by this. What does it mean for me? How do I look at this from that lens of balance? And why might I be feeling uncomfortable? Right? So we can practice that skill. I did see a question about the slide deck. You will likely receive this. Reilly Chabie [00:22:16]: I typically send it out afterwards. words to Dr. Lewis, but I appreciate that question regardless. So once we've kind of gotten into that spot of like feeling our feelings and offering that self-compassion, there are some interesting skills that we can utilize, especially when it relates to those overwhelming emotions that I always like to let people know about. So specifically, I like to talk about these skills that are considered distress tolerance skills. Distress tolerance essentially is this idea that we're working towards tolerating tolerating the fact that we will likely come into contact with distress. Things in life are stressful, therefore we're learning how to tolerate that. And this is more so to kind of give us that space to feel what we need to feel rather than saying that all of the things we experience have to be felt a certain way. Reilly Chabie [00:23:09]: So when we're thinking about distress tolerance, there's a couple of things that I suggest that individuals do. So first and foremost, when we're in heightened levels of stress, such as like when we're experiencing burnout, something that can be really helpful is building up a sense of grounding or reality. So when we're feeling stressed, we tend to kind of feel outside of our body a little bit, we tend to struggle on our focusing, we kind of feel disconnected. So in an effort to ground or kind of bring us back to that sense of reality in that present moment, I suggest utilizing the 5-4-3-2-1 method. I know that's kind of a mouthful, but all that essentially is asking you to do is you're going to utilize your 5 senses in order to reacclimate to your present moment. So for example, I might do this practice by asking myself to think of It's not thinking, but around me in the present moment, I'm going to identify 5 things that I see. I'm going to then go down to 4 things that I can touch, 3 things that I can smell, 2 things I can hear, and 1 thing that I can taste. And although some people will suggest that doing the senses that are kind of the easiest, so maybe like sight and hearing or the touch, to be in those like 5-4-3 areas. Reilly Chabie [00:24:44]: You can kind of mix and match that however you feel is appropriate for you. Whatever senses you feel like are most applicable, you can still utilize this even if you're not using all 5, or if you want to reorganize that system to be most approachable to you. All that's doing is it's bringing you back into the present moment, which allows you to reconnect to any sort of thing that you're trying to navigate in that moment. I also suggest the concept radical acceptance, which is a more like key distress tolerance And radical acceptance involves fully acknowledging and embracing your present moment, including all of the difficulties and the discomforts that you're feeling, without trying to change or control it. And I know that seems kind of counterproductive to the idea of balance, but if you think about yourself, for example, on a boat, let's say it's like a small, like one-person boat. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:25:39]: Mm-hmm. Reilly Chabie [00:25:39]: And you notice that the waves are kind of rocking you back and forth a little bit, and you're trying not to tip over on the boat. You might, unfortunately, in order to try and control that situation, you might overcorrect as the waves tilt you in one direction, and that might make the boat tip over. So what we don't necessarily always want to do is focus on how we control a particular emotion or discomfort. Sometimes it pays off to simply acknowledge its presence and be like, wow, Wow, this doesn't feel great, and not put that expectation on ourselves to fix it or change it or figure it out. And what you might tend to notice, as per somebody mentioned earlier in the chat, is that that thing that's making you feel uncomfortable or distressed might be outside of your control, which tells you that it doesn't fit into your key balancing act, right? If something's outside of your control, all you can focus on is what you can do in that moment. And using radical acceptance and kind of acknowledging that discomfort can kind of lead to that realization, helping us through that process. So those kind of original tips focused a lot on some of those emotional aspects and kind of being kind to ourselves and really focusing on, on that cognitive piece. I also feel like it's helpful to kind of provide some practical balancing tips, especially as we relate it back to the academic side of our experience. Reilly Chabie [00:27:09]: So think about like our organizational tools, our time management tools, things like that. So first and foremost, for balancing, we can think about creating a schedule that includes self-care, specific breaks, or other relaxation techniques, right? We're trying to kind of organize and balance things out a little bit. We might block out time in that schedule for things that we value. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:34]: Right. Reilly Chabie [00:27:34]: So for example, if we really value our social connection, we're gonna wanna schedule time to make sure that we are connecting with those we care about, family, friends, so on and so forth. If we are really into a particular hobby, being able to make sure we create space for that in whatever capacity we can helps to create balance when things are stressful. It can also be time between classes, activities, work-related events, things like that, to kind of give yourself a chance to reset or emotionally and mentally recollect. I remember during my grad school days, I would focus on like my commute as a great way to just kind of disconnect from what I had just been experiencing before I enter into my next role or, you know, my specific thing as soon as I got home or went to work or whatever it was. So maybe I use that as a time to listen to music or listen to an audiobook or just allow myself to listen to the car sounds as I was driving on 75 wherever I was going. So think about some of those ways in which you can organize your time to kind of create that balance. We can also consider shifting and shuffling priorities when needed, right? So maybe it's okay for me to shift my work schedule around to make room for this time I need to study before my exam, or maybe I can shuffle around this thing that I had scheduled or this preemptive study time to focus on being present with my family for a little bit, whatever it might be. It's also really crucial that you work together with your loved ones, your peers in your classes, or colleagues to kind of create a sense of support and accountability. Reilly Chabie [00:29:18]: Doing this all by yourself can be really hard, and I think a big part of why these webinars are offered is to showcase that there are resources and spaces on campus that can help you feel like you can maintain this, this kind of project for yourself and engage in the things that you want to engage in. So be mindful of what's around you, who you're connecting with, and utilize them in that way. And then once again, some of these basic time management skills— so planners, calendars, using task lists, whatever feels like it's going to be most applicable to you and your experience. And this could also be a great time to try something new if you've never tried it before. This is a good time to explore some of those areas before we start the semester so that you can kind of consider how that would fit into your daily experience. I think it's helpful too just to remind yourself that priorities change, and as we try to work towards balance, we might notice that something calls our attention over the thing we were originally trying to balance out. And it's okay to focus on other areas of your wellness as you try to tackle one that's been particularly difficult. Because if our wellness areas make up a whole person, sometimes we got to, you know, figure out how to deal with this part of our emotional wellness before we figure out how to take care of our spiritual wellness. Reilly Chabie [00:30:41]: And we don't know that until we start exploring some of these different areas. So once again, that's where that kind of self-compassion and kindness can come into play. As I mentioned, when we were kind of going over our overview for our conversation today, I wanted to specifically take some time out to talk about boundaries, which is an aspect of this balancing act that we're talking about here. Boundaries in particular, I think to some degree have been a bit of a buzzword over the years, but they're really crucial in helping you build your own confidence and kind of maintaining your own sense of identity as you work your way through the U of M Flint community. And I think it's helpful to consider that there are several different types of boundaries that you might engage in. Some might be more applicable in one area of your life over another, but I put this helpful kind of graphic up here to kind of give you some insight into what these boundaries might look like. So we have boundaries like our mental boundaries, emotional boundaries, internal boundaries that help us kind of self-regulate as a As opposed to boundaries that we set with other people. We of course have our physical boundaries, time boundaries, and even the way in which we converse with one another. Reilly Chabie [00:32:03]: So not an exhaustive list, but once again, a helpful kind of diagram to give us an idea as to what types of boundaries we may or may not need to set in our time at U of M Flint. So let's think about what the process actually is in setting boundaries. So setting boundaries is really focused on building a sense of understanding your limits. So you know you best. You're likely to kind of be able to do these self-check-ins to be like, wow, you know, I'm doing this thing and I've realized that I've hit this threshold, right? I am above this threshold in whatever I'm feeling. I know that sometimes I feel like that in group work where I'm trying to communicate with somebody and I'm having some challenges. I know where my limit is. So I try to set some boundaries in order for me to not get frustrated or feel resentful or challenge other people in my group. Reilly Chabie [00:33:00]: So ultimately, you might ask yourself through self-check-ins, am I getting enough rest? That might help you give an idea as to where your limits are in terms of how much sleep you're getting. You might ask yourself, am I doing too much? Or is this particular situation nourishing me in the way that I need it to? So those self-check-ins can kind of help you define those limits. It's important that when setting boundaries, you're considering when you need to say no. I think that's pretty typical in that boundary space. Once you've known a limit, you might say no to something in particular to kind of help address that issue. But it is also important to know when to say yes. So yes to something can help build our confidence, can help challenge us in different ways to help balance out some of those core wellness dimensions. We also want to be able to kind of determine what our priorities are. Reilly Chabie [00:33:54]: So what exactly are the priorities in that particular situation? And are these boundaries that I need going to align with those priorities? Or even asking yourself, is this situation aligning with my priorities? So once we've kind of established some of those things, although it's not necessarily as clear-cut in the real world, I like to break it down into these 3 steps in terms of how you're going to set your boundary. So first, you're going to define the boundary. What does it look like? What specific thing are you trying to create a boundary? So going back to the previous slide, we might look at, okay, I'm going to set an emotional boundary, or I'm going to set a time-based boundary because I know that I need to leave in the next half hour if I'm going to make it to work on time. So you're gonna define that boundary. Next step, you're gonna communicate that. You're gonna showcase to yourself, how do I communicate? How do I say this in an appropriate way? How do I say this in a way that is effective and clear? And consider who your audience is. You might set a boundary differently with a professor as you do with a best friend. It just depends. Reilly Chabie [00:35:07]: And then the last step is set your consequence. So we're not necessarily talking about ultimatums when we think about setting consequences, but rather what's going to happen if a boundary is not respected. So if I set a boundary and somebody doesn't respect that, is the consequence that I'm going to reiterate that boundary and then say, look, I, I can't engage in it this time, I'm gonna have to leave right now, I can't stay for that extra 30 minutes that I had before, right? So what does that consequence look like? And even more so, when you set that consequence, that's you essentially setting yourself up to be held accountable internally on reinforcing and engaging in those boundaries. It's one thing to set a boundary. It's a whole other thing to reinforce them and kind of enforce them in a way that kind of keeps us accountable. So let's go over a quick example slide of what some of these boundaries might might look like. So for example, I might word a boundary such as, I'm going to be honest and vulnerable with myself. That might be an internal type of boundary that I hold myself accountable to. Reilly Chabie [00:36:15]: Or I might say, I'm going to keep a gratitude journal. That's kind of like a material, perhaps, boundary that like, I want to engage in this thing. I'm saying yes to this thing, and I'm going to hold myself accountable to that. I might also say, as a friend, you shouldn't be gossiping about me. That's another type of kind of social boundary that we can set, right? We're very clearly communicating like, hey, you're gossiping about me and that's not okay as a friend. You might also say, I'm uncomfortable in this situation, so I'm going to leave, right? So that's a clear boundary, a clear expectation stating without too much detail what you're experiencing. This is my wording. This does not necessarily reflect what you yourself will feel or what you yourself are going to experience. Reilly Chabie [00:37:02]: So keep that in mind that although these are some examples, they may not perfectly line up with your experience and you might word them differently. But each of these kind of give a clear depiction as to what a boundary could be, and you can set time limits to them. You can add them in particular situations. It just depends on where you need to set that boundary. So as we look at wrapping up here, I have a few more slides to just kind of talk about last thoughts and then some resources. I think it's so crucial to consider that as you're practicing balance and boundaries, it will not happen overnight, you feeling balanced. You might feel closer and closer that you're getting to that point, but it takes a lot of practice to engage in this work, and it requires a sense of understanding that you're likely to make mistakes and that it's gonna be kind of challenging, that if we don't feel it overnight and we choose to stop, we're not gonna achieve that balance in the way that we want to. So be kind to yourself in that process. Reilly Chabie [00:38:05]: And the more you practice, the more likely it's going to be second nature and more of a habit for you, the same way we build habits in other ways. And ultimately, when in doubt, if you're not sure if you should set a boundary, if you're not sure you should do a coping skill, if you're not sure what you should be doing, you can always ask for help in whatever context that you're in. Maybe you need to ask for help by extending an assignment, sending an email to your professor. Maybe you just need to yap about it with your friends for a little bit and really process through that information before you determine what you need to do. Ultimately, Ultimately, you have people on campus, you have people in your life who are great soundboards in trying to navigate and work through these stressors as you start your grad degree. And it is perfectly acceptable to ask questions and really get to know what other people are doing too, so that you have something to go off of. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:39:08]: Reilly, great job. Thank you so much for all of this. You did a great job as always. So thank you very much, Reilly, for being here tonight and for sharing all of this amazing information, and wish you the best as you start the new term. The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a Victor in grad school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:39:52]: I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Understanding and Conquering Imposter Syndrome in Graduate School
In the latest episode of Victors in Grad School, Dr. Christopher Lewis and Darien Wilkerson tackle a challenge nearly every graduate student faces: imposter syndrome. Through a thoughtful conversation, the episode explores what imposter syndrome looks like, why it happens, and—most importantly—how you can manage it to foster success throughout your graduate experience. Defining Imposter Syndrome Right from the start, Darien Wilkerson clarifies that imposter syndrome isn't a mental health disorder, but rather a common "thinking error"—a cognitive distortion that leads capable, accomplished people to doubt their worth or believe their success is due to luck. If you've ever questioned whether you truly deserved an achievement, wondered when others would "find out" you're not as competent as they think, or attributed accomplishments to external factors, you're not alone. Many students, regardless of their background or experience, feel this way at some point. Recognizing the Signs and the Cycle The conversation delves into the broader impacts of imposter syndrome: chronic anxiety, burnout, perfectionism, and the need for external validation. Darien Wilkerson draws attention to how these feelings can create a repeating cycle—doubt leads to over-preparation, achievement brings only brief relief, and then the process repeats itself. Crucially, the episode discusses different "types" of imposter syndrome, based on research by Dr. Valerie Young: the perfectionist, the expert, the soloist, the natural genius, and the superhuman. Recognizing your own tendencies in these categories can be the first step to addressing them. Why Does It Happen? Many factors contribute: family and cultural expectations, pre-existing mental health challenges, negative comparisons to others, new or unfamiliar environments, and even being part of a minority group in an academic setting. Understanding the root causes can help frame your feelings and set the stage for effective strategies to manage them. Practical Strategies for Management Most empowering, the episode offers actionable steps for listeners. Darien Wilkerson encourages acknowledging feelings without judgment, challenging negative self-talk, celebrating accomplishments (even small ones), and embracing a growth mindset. Simple exercises—like naming your achievements or reframing negative thoughts—can shift your perspective and boost confidence. Listen and Grow This episode isn't just an exploration—it's a toolkit for students, offering both understanding and real-world steps to thrive, not just survive, in grad school. If you've ever struggled with doubt or the pressure to be perfect, tune into this episode of Victors in Grad School for practical guidance and a reminder: you absolutely belong. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Tonight we're going to be talking about the imposter syndrome and understanding imposter syndrome. It's definitely something that most graduate students are going to have happen to them at some point, and it's important to have some some hints, some tricks, some things that you can do to be able to prepare yourself, but also to know what to do when it happens. And I'm excited to be able to have another colleague friend from our university here. Darien Wilkerson is with us. Darien is with our Counseling and Psychological Services Office. You're also gonna hear it called CAPS, and that is our Counseling and Psychological Services Office on campus. And they're here to support you. And I know that Darien will talk about that as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:54]: So I'm gonna turn it over to Darien. Darien, thanks so much for being here tonight. Darien Wilkerson [00:00:57]: Yeah, likewise. Thank you, Dr. Lewis. And again, welcome everyone who's about to be joining U of M Flint in your graduate studies here. So my role this evening is just going to be walking you guys through understanding imposter syndrome just a little bit. So having a little bit more context, ideas, and some strategies, because like Dr. Lewis said, at some point, whether that's in the program or beyond, we're going to potentially navigate Or go through our own process of this phenomenon, right? And just trying to figure out how do we work through it? What do we do? So we will jump into that. So some quick learning objectives. Darien Wilkerson [00:01:35]: Again, we're gonna understand that defining that definition of imposter syndrome, identify those self-patterns associated with imposter syndrome. So as we're going through this PowerPoint, start to really reflect on yourself currently. What could be possible? What's currently happening right now? Getting into graduate program in itself can feel like that too, right? So just really start to reflect currently where you're at and just kind of examine those factors that contribute to self-doubt and perceived inadequacy. Going to learn a little bit about applying those strategies to challenge imposter thoughts and reframing those negative self-talk, and then ultimately learn to develop those healthier approaches to success. And hopefully trying to get more self-compassion, growth, and recognition of your current accomplishments and future accomplishments. So I will try to stay mindful of the chat in case there's questions that kind of come through. Hopefully with time we'll be able to get to some questions, but just let everyone know I am trying to stay mindful of that. So feel free to kind of put those in the chat when it comes to mind. Darien Wilkerson [00:02:40]: But I just want to set the stage for us. As we're kind of talking about imposter syndrome, I think it's fair for us to get into a headspace, right? So I start with this slide. Have you ever— these are some of the go-to questions, right? Felt like you didn't deserve an accomplishment? Wondered when someone would realize you weren't capable of something? Attributed your success to luck or good timing? Or you felt like everyone else knew what they were doing except you? These are really the starting blocks of questioning that we put on ourselves that makes imposter syndrome start to become active. So it's good to recognize, man, do I really say this to myself? Are these common themes of questioning that I do? And if so, how do we start to start— how do we start to address those things now so they don't move into an introduction of imposter syndrome? So let's get into a little bit of the definition. So imposter syndrome is a psychological cognitive distortion. That's a fancy word, but it's basically just saying a thinking error. We all have thinking errors. They come up from time to time. Darien Wilkerson [00:03:50]: But really, imposter syndrome is not a mental health disorder or a challenge. It's just a thinking— how we're thinking, how we're processing something, right? And that involves feelings of self-doubt. Inadequacy, personal incompetence, and that persists despite the education, experience, or accomplishments that you already have. So it's really this thing that says you're not capable when there's so much evidence that says the opposite, right? It's like I said, a large amount of people will probably experience that within their life, and it's not a diagnosable mental health challenge. This is something that we could go through depending on various different factors. So how does it present? That questioning on the last slide is typically how it starts. So it starts to— it starts with questioning ourselves. We have negative self-talk, which is more so just like really saying negative things about ourselves on a regular basis. Darien Wilkerson [00:04:46]: Inability to internalize accomplishments. So maybe if you're hearing an accomplishment, you might start to question or doubt it. And that continues that feeling of inadequacy, right? Because we don't leave room for Positives. So those are quick definitions, quick, you know, symptoms, if you will, when it comes to what imposter syndrome can look like. So future concerns. So this is happening on a regular basis. What are some of these concerns long term if we don't find management? So that imposter syndrome can lead to anxiety, you know, where we have high levels of chronic anxiety. Because we're questioning everything, right, and our capabilities. Darien Wilkerson [00:05:28]: Depression, low mood can come up. Burnout, overworking, meaning you might have to feel like you have to prove yourself. So in proving yourself, you're working more and more and more just to try to, you know, show people I am worthy, I am capable. And that could potentially lead to burnout, overworking. That also leads to perfectionism. You don't really have a lot of room or space to want to make mistakes because if you don't feel like you belong, You feel like you constantly have to be perfect. So perfectionism can be a challenge or a concern. And then external validation, you might be craving that external validation all the time. Darien Wilkerson [00:06:07]: And that could be good or bad, right? And how that shapes us. Self-sabotage, right? So we might quit a job. We may not want to pursue the degree that we want to pursue because we feel like we just aren't able to do it. That can lead to procrastination because procrastination typically is trying to protect us from failure, right? So we delay starting something in fear of us potentially failing that thing. And then self-criticism and low self-esteem, they kind of unfortunately go hand in hand together. But this is talking about our image. How do we view ourselves? And how are we talking to ourselves on a regular basis? So those are some of those feature concerns when we talk about imposter syndrome, which is really important that we're We're trying to have this conversation now so these future concerns don't become so pressing. Okay, so the next one, I think it's good to talk about the cycle that imposter syndrome can have for us. Darien Wilkerson [00:07:07]: So really, when you're thinking about imposter syndrome, it starts with a task. You get assigned a task, you get assigned a responsibility, or you move into a new role in your life, right? And that can create a flooding of anxiety or overpreparation. Right? From that anxiety over preparation, it can go into the yellow, which is task. It'll eventually get into a task finish, like you either complete the assignment, you complete the degree, right? And there's a quick moment of relief from that experience. But then we start rationalizing our accomplishments. I got lucky. Someone else would be better. There's something that starts to scale down our our accomplishment, right? Which leads to more self-doubt, less confidence, and the cycle continues there and there and there and just repeats itself, right? So if you recognize where you're at potentially in this cycle, that can probably help you slow down and stop and reflect. Darien Wilkerson [00:08:05]: What is going on? Why am I in this situation? How can I get myself out of this cycle so it doesn't continue on again? So I just thought it was a good idea to introduce what the imposter phenomenon cycle can look like, just so we can be mindful moving forward. Another thing I think that's important is that there's different types of imposter syndrome. We're talking broadly, but there are different, like, distinguishable features of imposter syndrome, right? So this researcher, psychologist, Dr. Valerie Young, she did research And really composed of 5 different presentations and how imposter syndrome can come up. So we talked about it a little bit, but the perfectionist— so you don't have any— you don't have a lot of room to make errors. If you make an error, then that's automatically associated with shame. You have to be the expert in something. If you feel like you're not the expert, then you feel like you're failing, and that brings up shame as well. Darien Wilkerson [00:09:03]: So you have to be the best of the best. That's what the expert imposter is trying to say. If you're not the best at this, then You're not going to be good at this. Now, the soloist, basically meaning that it's wrong to ask for help, or you have a lot of anxiety or shame for asking for help. You should be able to accomplish this by yourself, right? The natural genius is talking about aptitude. You should have an aptitude to get this done with ease or speed. And if you start to struggle, then that starts to make us question, am I capable? Am I deserving, right? So then the last one is just talking about the superhuman. So that measures competence based on how many roles you can juggle or excel in. Darien Wilkerson [00:09:47]: So if you're someone again who wants to be seen as like, I can do this, this, this, and this, and this at the same time, that's overwhelming to us, right? And we might not be able to manage that. So the superhuman is trying to say, I can do everything. Like, you can look at me, I can— I'm the person for the job. So again, these are 5 distinct ones, and I also believe if we are aware of which ones we fall into, our personalities lean towards, we can kind of start to rectify that so it doesn't get to a very severe state. So those would be the 5 types of imposter syndromes, right? Or presentations. So I am keeping an eye on that chat. So, all right, move forward. So causes. Darien Wilkerson [00:10:38]: So we're talking about imposter syndrome. How does it occur? You know, what does occur, but what's the causes? Why do people get into this headspace, right? So there's a couple of different reasons. One is family dynamics, maybe, and that can also go into cultural expectations. So those kind of tie in together. So what does our family say about failure? What does our family say about being successful? What does that look like? And that could be tied into cultural expectations as well. So if you feel like you're failing based off of what you grew up knowing in your culture and your household, imposter syndrome can really flare up, unfortunately. Preexisting mental health challenges, so anxiety, depression, you know, these kind of common mental health challenges can be a precursor. Doesn't mean it's going to happen, but You just have to be more mindful around how you're internalizing setbacks, failures, challenges, because imposter syndrome can come up when it comes to that. Darien Wilkerson [00:11:38]: Negative fear-based comparisons. So if we're constantly comparing ourselves to other people, we don't look at comparison as a way of improving. We look at it as a way of being negative towards ourselves. I'll never amount to that, or they're better than me in this. We start to say these things to rationalize our position, and then it just makes us feel down, right? Novelty, while novelty can be good, like I said, those new opportunities and responsibilities can also create imposter syndrome. I'm new into this program. I'm new into this field. How— like, I don't have the backing or experience to say that I'm going to be good. Darien Wilkerson [00:12:18]: So since I don't have that prior experience, you start to question and doubt, am I even going to be good at this thing, right? Lastly, I think the last one goes to cultural expectations, but holding minority identities Can also be room for imposter syndrome. Doesn't always happen, but if you're a minority going into a certain space, that can create imposter syndrome just initially, because you're trying to want to prove yourself, right? So there's a couple ideas to kind of think about for ourselves, right? But if any of those speak to you, this is time to reflect and just be mindful of how we're carrying some of those things. Okay, so conquering it. What are some of these strategies? So 4 steps for you, just quick things to keep in mind as you're trying to tackle the imposter syndrome if it does ever occur for you. Number 1, you just want to acknowledge the feeling. Whatever's coming up for you emotionally, you want to validate the presence of the emotion, minimize judgment towards that present feeling, and remind yourself that feelings don't always mean that they're facts. The only thing feelings do is gives us a direction to go towards. It doesn't say that's definitive or that's proof, right? So one, you just want to be mindful and just acknowledge that feeling. Darien Wilkerson [00:13:39]: If you feel like you're disappointing someone, you feel like you're failing, if you're getting sad, start there and acknowledge that feeling. Step 2, challenge inner critic. So there's a critic that comes up, right? We talked about negative self-talk. So if you're saying negative things, you want to start to challenge the doubt. You want to challenge those things that come up for you. Ask for the evidence, whether that's internally to yourself or you start having conversations with other people. And also try to identify overlooked strengths. Identify successes you're not taking ownership of. Darien Wilkerson [00:14:12]: It's probably a handful of things that we do that we just expect ourselves to do. But when you slow it down, you're like, oh, That's a big thing. I actually did excel in that. I did get into this program. I did get the grades and the test scores to actually show that I'm capable, right? So you want to start challenging those inner critic voices that come up. You want to do that early in. So that's step 1, acknowledging the feeling. Step 2 is challenging those— that inner critic. Darien Wilkerson [00:14:43]: Okay, so this is a Brief reframing example. So the thought can say, I only got this opportunity because I got lucky. And then you want to start to challenge that thought, right? So some questions you might ask yourself is, what's the evidence for this thought? Is there any proof that supports it? And then what's the evidence against it? And you start to kind of put your thoughts on trial, basically, right? And then you start to create this catalog of information. And that will help you rationally understand, well, this thought doesn't have a lot of weight to it at all. And then you start asking more questions like, what would you tell a friend who had this thought? If you shift the perspective and you put it back to a friend sharing with you, well, I got this opportunity because I got lucky, what would you say to that friend? So that perspective-taking kind of helps us rationalize a little bit differently how we're talking to ourselves. And then the last one is, am I holding space for compassion? Am I really being compassionate to myself right now? Right? So I would say those are some of those 4 guided prompt questions just to ask ourselves when we're trying to challenge a thought. And I thought that was just probably something hopefully of value just to really start the conversation with ourselves or with somebody else if we had to. Okay, step 3. Darien Wilkerson [00:16:08]: Own your accomplishments. Easier said than done, right? But you want to start to reflect on your accomplishments and also celebrate those accomplishments. That could be celebration is pat yourself on the back, go out to eat, let somebody know. Just do something that celebrates and acknowledges, no, I did this thing. It actually happened. And then embrace the praise objectively. Right? Just allow the praise to occur. Acknowledge the discomfort internally if you hear the praise, but also to say, yeah, they have a point there. Darien Wilkerson [00:16:40]: They're right. I did do this thing. And then ask an unbiased observer for evidence of your ability. So if you really feel like you need to have the extra mile, go the extra mile, ask someone else. Like, hey, did you like— and that could be a manager, that could be a boss, whoever. Those people are the ones that can really give you hopefully unbiased evidence or answers to some of your questions. And next to this is about an exercise you can try to do on the regular. Just 3 accomplishments that you're, you know, that you're proud of, 2 strengths you used to achieve them, and 1 piece of evidence that shows that you are capable of ongoing success. Darien Wilkerson [00:17:21]: It's something you can try to do every now and then just to remind yourself, like, Yes, I have accomplishments in my past. Yes, I have these strengths, and this is the evidence of that strength. That might be helpful to continue to form positive thinking and reflection of our success, just so we can start to own up— own our accomplishments for step 3. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:44]: Okay. Darien Wilkerson [00:17:47]: Then getting into step 4, recognizing Perfection is not a real thing, right? So you want to go from perfection to growth. So recognize progress is more important than perfection. Success does not require perfection. Failure can be a teachable moment. So if you're in— as you're in school moving forward, if you feel like there's times that you feel like you failed, that does not mean that's the end of your story or end of learning or growing. It just means that you have a moment where you can actually get the most out of the opportunity. You can ask questions, clarifying questions, consult with people, try to figure out how do I ensure that this doesn't happen to me again, right? And that can hopefully lead to self-compassion, which removes you from going from a place of judgment and shame to actually being able to grow from that situation. So really, step 4 is talking about just being, being kind to yourself and just trying to be in a growth mentality versus a perfectionist mentality. Darien Wilkerson [00:18:51]: And that should hopefully guide us through any kind of imposter syndrome that could come up. So the finalized toolkit list is just talking about, you know, start to finish what we just discussed. Acknowledge the feeling, check the evidence, challenge the thought, avoid negative comparisons. If anything, use comparison as a motivator versus anything that could bring us down. Practice self-compassion. That could be through the accomplishments that we talked about. And also just remember the accomplishments, accept the praise, and focus on the growth. So those are just, just a quick toolkit list of just reminders, just so you have those. Darien Wilkerson [00:19:33]: But yeah, that's what I have for you when it comes to imposter syndrome. How do you tackle it? What it, what it is. So now questions. If anyone had any of those questions, that would be a good time to do that. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:47]: Darien, this is great. Really appreciate you sharing all of this. It definitely opened my eyes to some things that I hadn't even thought of, and so I really appreciate you walking us through this. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:00]: The University of Michigan-Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a Victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Jumpstart Your Graduate Journey: Faculty Tips for Success and Connection
Are you setting out on the next step of your academic career? Whether you're a prospective student or already admitted, the journey into graduate school can feel both thrilling and daunting. In the recent episode of "Victors in Grad School," host Dr. Christopher Lewis gathers a powerhouse panel of UM-Flint faculty—Dr. Amy Yorke, Shelby Newport, and Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer—to share insight, encouragement, and practical advice for students about to embark on this transformative chapter. Curiosity, Openness, and Risk-Taking: Keys to Thriving One of the major themes in this candid conversation is the power of curiosity. Shelby Newport highlights how students who approach their studies with an open mind and a "thirst for knowledge" get the most from both their coursework and their relationships with faculty. Every panelist underscores the value of taking risks—introducing yourself to professors, trying new things academically, and stepping outside your comfort zone. Dr. Amy Yorke expands on the idea of risk-taking, urging students to be proactive in making connections and embracing discomfort as part of growth. Rather than seeing new challenges as obstacles, the panel encourages reframing them as opportunities to become stronger, more resilient scholars. Building Meaningful Faculty Relationships A standout point from the episode is the importance of genuine interaction between students and faculty. Whether you're studying in-person or online, building connections early makes it easier to ask for help, gain mentorship, and tap into career opportunities down the line. The panel advises introducing yourself, participating actively, and reaching out even when things are going well—not just when you're struggling. Embracing Support and University Resources Graduate school is demanding, but you're never alone. The faculty share practical recommendations for time management, advocating for starting strong, using campus resources (like counseling and library services), and communicating openly when life hits a rough patch. The Bigger Picture: Growth, Balance, and Belonging Perhaps most powerfully, the episode reminds listeners that while grad school brings new pressures, it's also about self-discovery, finding balance, and developing a community of learning. Both vulnerability and persistence are celebrated as essential ingredients for success. Ready for more inspiration and concrete advice as you begin your graduate school adventure? Tune in to "Victors in Grad School" and let these expert voices guide you toward a fulfilling and successful graduate experience. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Hello, welcome. Thank you so much for being here today. I'm Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited that you're here today for the first of a number of sessions that we lovingly call our Jumpstart Orientation. It is a way for us to be able to help you to make that jump start into graduate school. And I am so excited to be able to kick off with a few of our faculty members that are joining us today to be able to talk to you about jumping into graduate school, what it's like, what to expect when you get to here for your classes, and to be able to help you in this journey that you're on. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:54]: I've got 3 of my friends with me tonight, Dr. Amy Yorke from our physical therapy program, Shelby Newport from our Arts Administration program, and Dr. Mohamed Mekawer from our Artificial Intelligence— no, yes, Artificial Intelligence program. I'm like, wait a minute, I just lost it for a second. I am so excited to have all 3 of them here today and be able to moderate a conversation with them. But what we want to do is engage with you too. So this opportunity is going to be, I'm gonna ask them some questions that I've prepared, but then really, if you've got questions, throw 'em in the chat. And we're, you know, no questions off bounds. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:41]: We want to answer your questions tonight to be able to help to demystify what it's gonna be like and to help you to better get yourself prepared. So, so my friends, thank you for being here. Really appreciate it. Shelby Newport [00:01:55]: Thank you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:55]: And I'm going to kick this off by asking a question to all 3 of you. From your perspective, what separates graduate students who really thrive from those who struggle in graduate school? Shelby Newport [00:02:09]: Who wants to kick it off? Should I jump in? Dr. Amy Yorke [00:02:12]: Go ahead, Shelby, and then I'll follow up after you. Shelby Newport [00:02:14]: Great. Um, hi all, welcome. Um, like Dr. Lewis said, I'm Shelby Newport. I'm a costume designer and in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts in the area of theater, which is where arts administration sits. And what separates our graduate students, I think, might be the same as all graduate students, which is this curiosity and a willingness. And so you come in the classroom and you know you're not the smartest person in the room. You act like you're not the smartest person in the room, and you're there with this curiosity for Like, bring it. Shelby Newport [00:02:51]: What is it gonna be? And I'm ready for it because I just have this like thirst for knowledge. And those are the students that get the opportunities to work alongside faculty more often, who get the opportunities for the faculty member to say, that paper was so great and had so much in it. I want you to submit it to this conference and come alongside and present with me. Like, those extra opportunities come to those with that. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:03:19]: Gonna add to that with that curiosity is the risk-taking. So being willing to introduce yourself to the faculty member face-to-face is really powerful, but even an email has meaning as well. Being willing to kind of take that risk of stepping out of your comfort zone. So even if you have never like engaged in research, but you're curious about it, of saying, you know, are there any projects that you're working on? projects that you need help or assistance with. Any of those things of taking risk. Because if you're not feeling uncomfortable, you're not growing, and graduate school is going to push you to grow. And you'd rather have it— you'd rather have you kind of leading that a little bit with some pushing versus being pulled all the time, because that becomes really, really hard. So just adding on to Shelby's curiosity, I would add taking risk. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:04:20]: All right, so I guess it's my turn. So hello everyone, good afternoon, and it's my pleasure to talk about to you about my experience. So my name is again Mohamed Makour. I'm actually from the computer science background, so I direct software engineering and AI. And I will probably, to add to what Shelby and Amy were saying, I'll talk about my experience, right? So when I did my bachelor degree, I was looking for a degree to get a job. When I went out for my master's, I was looking for opportunity. I wasn't looking for a degree. I already have one. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:04:51]: I already have a job. And I've already seen a lot of problems in industry where I was working. And I realized that I need to develop some skills that are needed for me to go to the next level, to upscale my career, right? So the master's program was not a degree that I was seeking. It was an opportunity for me to develop better skills that can help me be better in what I do as a software engineer back then. And then I realized I enjoyed that kind of problem solving so much that I have to also continue with the PhD level, right? So, so to me, grad school is where you realize, okay, this is where I am right now in my career. Can I do a shift? Can I improve it? Can I go deeper into some topic that I think I enjoy the most, but I don't have the appropriate skills for? And that's how you kick off your master's degree. To me, this is how you succeed on it because You are actually now driving your own decision on where you want to specialize versus you are, as in the bachelor's, taking a bunch of courses just because you want to have a degree and you have no background, right? This is how— this is my perception of a successful, you know, graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:55]: How should students approach their first few weeks of graduate school to get off to a strong start? Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:06:03]: What advice would you give to students who are struggling with time management? Dr. Amy Yorke [00:06:08]: I would encourage students to review the course syllabus and start to put down dates in your calendar of when things are due, and knowing that you have a life outside of school. So depending on if you're a full-time student or part-time student, right, we're all very, very busy. And so establishing like, this is when things are due, so you can start to plan your other activities or make adjustments adjustments or changes, I think it's really important. And I always encourage students to start strong, like study more at the beginning than perhaps what you think you need, because you don't want to find yourself like in a hole. So in the physical therapy program, our majority of our students are full-time, and the hard thing is, is when they have study habits that they used in undergrad and they believe that those study habits will continue to serve them, such as waiting to study for an exam until the night before. And then And then they realize that does not serve them well, and they find themselves in a hole. You don't want to find yourself in a hole. So knowing what your schedule is and perhaps studying and being engaged in the content more upfront builds success, because success begets success. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:07:23]: So that's my word of advice for you. Shelby Newport [00:07:27]: Mohamed, I liked your story about how you started your graduate experience, and I want to share just a little piece of mine, which is an MFA in costume design and theater. Purdue University, a big school and on-site, not online. But my advice as a now costume designer is when you look good, you feel good. And so look the part. Think about how you present yourself on campus or in an online setting. Because in my Arts Administration program, it's fully online. And so yeah, we know you're in and out and you're doing stuff and you're joining a 5:30 class, maybe running from dropping off the kids and getting dinner ready and sitting down. But when you're in it and turn your camera on and you're in it, like, what does it all kind of put together to show your faculty member that you are ready to learn? You've got that curiosity and that willingness, and you're in it. Shelby Newport [00:08:23]: Doesn't mean you don't have pajama pants on the bottom. You know, maybe that's the case, but like, be ready. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:08:32]: All right, so let me, let me start where I ended earlier. So in the, in your bachelor's degree, we are most likely told what to take as courses. In the master's program, this is your opportunity to decide about your own path, right? A lot of programs, at least the one that we administer at the CIT, at the computer science, we allow students to have their own custom-made paths, right? At least as director, I would say that the majority of my students, they don't follow the same path in their courses. It means that each one of them will have like a pile of courses that they choose based on their preferences, based on the challenges they are facing. Facing in their careers. And therefore, it's your opportunity for you to choose carefully what courses will contribute to your career and do so. Something that you may not do necessarily at the bachelor's level. So this is how you start strong is by selecting carefully the courses that will benefit you the most. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:09:23]: And I like also taking risk. Take risk at the master's level by taking courses that can really challenge you in different ways. That being said, in the master's program or in the graduate level, you have a career. You have a life. You have a family. Also pace it carefully when you do so, right? So you don't have to go full-time if you can't. That's totally fine, right? It's the graduate programs are designed to help you with your own pace. We can actually work to make that happen. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:54]: How can students build meaningful relationships with faculty rather than only interacting with them when they need something? Shelby Newport [00:10:04]: Well, in those online spaces, it's showing that engagement. And I think it's really easy to be a camera-off person, and it's— it's in some situations call for that. But as much as you can, show the faculty member in those synchronous online classes that you're engaged and you want to be there. And that's interjecting with a hand up or comments in the chat, whatever that class kind of rhythm is, but it's, it's an engagement. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:10:35]: There's nothing sweeter than being called by one's name. And so I think, again, like doing that introduction. So whether it's online or face-to-face, hi, my name is Amy Yorke. I'm one of the members in your class. Here's just a little bit about me. I'm excited to be here. Like that touch, that, that point means a lot. Don't ever think that you're bothering faculty to share to introduce yourself because you're not. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:11:01]: We're here to help you. Some— there's been numerous people along my path that have helped me, and it's, it's those reaching out points. And if you don't do it in the first couple weeks, don't think that you've lost your chance. Don't, don't, don't think you've lost it. And I also encourage it to happen early because you don't want your first contact with the faculty to be like, I'm struggling. And I don't know what to do. That can absolutely be the first contact, and don't be afraid to contact the faculty member if you're struggling. But if you start to develop that relationship sooner, it just makes it— it makes it a lot easier relationship. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:11:39]: And the more that I know about you and what drives you and why you're here and what your goals are, the better able I'm gonna be able to help you reach all of those. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:11:53]: Let me give a different perspective, which also based on my own experience. So I did my master's in University of Michigan-Dearborn, and during that master's/PhD, I had interactions with a lot of faculty that were not even my teachers, and I was able to benefit from them without being in their classroom. It's you being in a university means you are being with a lot of people that have a lot of added value that can really contribute to your career in so many ways, right? So do not just stick to the classroom. Be open to faculty who have projects, who have initiatives, who have clubs, who have events. Be there, participate, and, and build that network, build that connection with them, because it could be beneficial in so many ways. So therefore, you are here in university taking a class, whether it's online or in person, not doing anything like other type of, you know, learning, like, you know, tutorials or YouTube or or Udemy or whatever. You are here because you are looking for human touch. So benefit from it and make sure you connect with your faculty in so many ways because it will stay beyond your degree. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:03]: Mohamed, let me, let me go a little deeper on that. How would you say that students should take advantage of faculty expertise beyond what happens in the class? Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:13:13]: Absolutely. Let me start with this one, and I will give you examples, right? So one example was that students come to the classroom with problems, right? Challenges they either experience in their classroom or they experience in their careers, right? Find the right people who have not just the experience or the skill set, but also they have the excitement about this topic. Because us faculty, we are all excited about some topics, right? We all are engaged in some ways in some specific topics, right? Recently one student came to me and say, I have an experience in how we can refactor code, right? And to me, this is my favorite thing in the world, right? So automatically we connected, we started working together, we published papers together, despite that they are not in my classroom. It's as simple as that, right? They were able to benefit from the tool I developed during that time, and I was able to develop some research. So it happens in so many ways, right? For instance, I will give my own example when I was a student. There was one faculty in Dearborn that they have a book. They had a book about software engineering and I spent countless hours discussing chapters of that book, you know, and how we can improve that book and how we can benefit from it. Because I was reading it, I was excited about it. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:14:24]: I brought a lot of things that I think they should improve. And guess what? I'm using that book right now in my classroom after it was improved, right? So yes, you can benefit from that connection in so many ways if you are already engaged. If you bring your own problems to the table, you can actually find people who can share that excitement about those problems. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:44]: Shelby or Amy, any thoughts on that one either? Shelby Newport [00:14:49]: I'm not sure if it directly goes back to your original question, but just to say that I have in the past worked with graduate research assistants that were studying something else but were interested in exploring like my costume and theater history research. And those have been really productive relationships, to Mohamed's point. So there are opportunities not only in that social aspect and kind of where adjacent, but also maybe something that feels really different, but that the university offers. And maybe it scratches an itch in creativity or something else that helps your brain work through the stress and complications of your actual degree program, but gives you money as a graduate research assistant somewhere else. And those, I think at UM-Flint, we do those interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary relationships really well because we're small enough to be able to know each and interact as faculty and as students across the campus. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:15:52]: And I would add to that, some of the best conversations I have with students are not necessarily related to the content that I'm teaching, but it's related to things like, I really like the way that you teach, like, or I really noticed this about something very specific, you know, like I'd like to teach someday. And so that type of interaction of expertise I think that's a really good piece, not only like specifically for me, like as a physical therapist who specializes in neurologic rehab, but like outside of that, that as a student, as a human, you recognize characteristics of people. And in general, we like to talk about ourselves. And so just like we want to hear you talk about ourselves or yourself, if you ask us a question about ourselves, we're always very willing to share. And perhaps indirectly provide you some ideas for your own professional growth and development and some maybe indirect mentoring as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:54]: What are some common mistakes that you see graduate students make that can hurt their success or their relationships with faculty? Dr. Amy Yorke [00:17:04]: Not asking for help, I think, is one of the hardest— is one of the key areas that Yeah, and I would— Shelby Newport [00:17:41]: similar to that, I have seen students that just totally ghost, and that disappearing when you're feeling like you're not being as successful as you want to be, or you're overwhelmed, or whatever that might be, is not useful. Because of the intensity of these programs and the expectations on you as a graduate student, it's really important to communicate when you're struggling. And so that's to Amy's point, it's asking for help, but it's also just telling me what's going on. It's letting me know that someone in your family is really ill, and you're in the caregiving responsibility role, and it's tough, and you're trying to keep up. With that information, because we know you're adults, you're different than undergraduate students. I mean, I want my undergraduate students to say that as well. But I think with graduate students, you have so many things layered into your life right now. And to know just a portion of that lets me be a better teacher for you and supporter and mentor and sets you up with resources that you might not even know you have on campus. Shelby Newport [00:18:48]: So if I had a student say, I just lost my babysitter and now I can't come to the 5:30 Tuesday night class and like stuff's going on, I would tell you that there is backup childcare resources available for students. That's a co— it's called— you can all Google it— UM Emergency Backup Care. It's a benefit that you get as a student, I get as a faculty member, and it provides vetted care for children in emergency situations in your home or in a center. And like, maybe you didn't know you had that. A lot of my colleagues didn't know they had that. So in conversation and saying that you're struggling helps those resources come out as well. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:19:32]: So maybe my number one advice to students or to avoid the mistake that I see happen a lot is is the mistake of starting your work late. You know, graduate school is designed for you to challenge you in so many ways, and working on your assignments late means you are starting to work on a problem that requires a reflection while you're very stressed because you are catching a deadline, right? And that stress of catching a deadline will actually make you miss the whole point of the assignment. So a lot of my— at least this is speaking maybe out of my own area of specializations. If you're working on an assignment the day of the deadline, you may actually get it done, but you will miss the whole point of the assignment. You will not have enough time to reflect, to think of it, to think of how you can improve that problem and what makes it really interesting. You will just get it done and you will miss the whole point. So therefore, starting early is key to be able to understand, reflect, think of it, and give an answer, right? So students coming to me and say, if I start my assignment this much, would I be able to finish it? You can finish your assignment anytime, right? So that's not the point. The point is whether you understood. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:20:50]: We all have a life, we all have issues, and we all have things to balance. So giving yourself time to go through the assignment, you know, while you in a period of time will help you benefit from it more than you do it in one shot. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:21:06]: Chris, I want to add one more thing. Being resistant to feedback or not accepting feedback when it's provided. The spirit of feedback is intended to help you grow and develop. And I've realized something that I'm working on as a faculty member is I realize when students are resistant to feedback, sometimes I'm less likely to give it, which doesn't help them. And so it's something that I'm working on as a teacher of, for, for when I'm giving feedback and there's resistance, of trying to explore that resistance a little bit more with that student to try to help them understand that it's intended to help them. So I would say being resistant to feedback is also just a real— if feedback doesn't tell you that you're bad or that you're not smart, it's really intended to help you And that made me think of another thing, Chris, too, that this— Shelby Newport [00:22:08]: I'm terrible with these kind of phrases, but what's the see the forest for the trees, trees for the forest, right? Like, think of, to Mohamed's point, like, we scaffold and build the curriculum. And so in this kind of starting late or thinking about each of your classes as separate trees, you're not seeing the whole forest of this this thing that we have designed as curriculum to build on each part of it. And so like, oh, good job, I'm done with marketing class. Well, like, that's going to come back. And there's elements where we want you to build upon each of those and bring in knowledge and projects and the feedback, to Amy's point, feedback that you may have gotten in the first year into your second-year classes, into that thesis project. They're going to build on each other. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:59]: And so keeping that in mind, Amy, earlier you talked about mentorship, and if a student wants a faculty member to eventually serve as a mentor, what can they do to develop that relationship naturally over time? Dr. Amy Yorke [00:23:23]: Chris, I apologize, but I got distracted by the chat box, so can you repeat the question? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:28]: Sure thing. Now, earlier you talked about some faculty becoming mentors. If a student wants a faculty member to eventually serve as a mentor, what can they do to develop that relationship naturally over time? Dr. Amy Yorke [00:23:43]: I think just having conversations with the faculty regarding any of the work or content that's being developed, you know, attending office hours, asking the faculty member to share their story. You know, I'm curious, how did you get where you're at. What do you like most about your position? You know, what are some challenges that you're experiencing? And just having conversations. Going back to something Mohamed said too, like talking to faculty like outside of the classroom. So if there's club activities, those different types of things, or seeing them at a university event, all of those things really help foster that relationship. Over time. And I think that is somewhat key, that the more that we talk over time and I get to know you and watch you grow and progress, mentoring might change a little bit depending on what your needs are. But those are some strategies. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:24:51]: So if I may add, I'm going to talk about an experience that I had just today. Because I have office hours today for students who are registering for my courses. And one student came to the office hours and said, Professor, in my company we have this issue, you know, we have agent people using agents to develop some code. So how do we verify whether these agents are correct in the way they enter, you know, they put code in our systems, right? And I said, how do you think you're going to solve this problem? And he proposed a solution, and I proposed another solution. Then we end up converging towards a hybrid solution that I thought would work better for in this case. So this conversation ended up us deciding on the spot that he has to do a master's thesis or do an independent study where he can develop the solution. So bringing the problems to faculty on the table is one way for you to connect with them immediately if they have a common interest to solving these issues. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:25:46]: Shelby, anything you wanted to add with that one? No. Okay. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:25:52]: I can, I can add one more thing because I can answer the question about the graduate assistantship, right? If the faculty has interest into this, solving this issue, they may have opportunities for you to connect through assistantships this way, right? Because now you're not only you solving this issue in your own context, but also helping the faculty in their own research, right? And this is how you can connect with them through graduate assistantships, right? I personally get, what, 10, 20 requests a week now about people wanting to become my research assistants, right? And over the years, I accepted only a few, the ones that were actually pointing out to the issues that I thought that I was trying to solve myself. So, and this takes time, by the way. You cannot just pick those. You have to have that natural connection through, you know, that faculty because you work in this area, they work in this area. This is number one. Number two, they are both working on the same the same problem, and this is the best organic way for you to become an assistant for that faculty. So find the right faculty that share your same interest, and this is key for you to become a research assistant in their labs. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:03]: Yeah, and one of the things that I'll add there is that just in general, the way that the University of Michigan Flint works in regards to graduate assistantships is We post them usually in the spring. We are actually just posting them now for the fall. So if you go to the Office of Graduate Programs website, you can go on to the Office of Graduate Programs website, click on paying for graduate school, and in there, there's a link to information about graduate research assistantships. Those are the assistantships that we have available here. They are mostly part-time assistantships, meaning that most students are working about 6 or 7 hours a week, and you apply for them like any job. Now, you only want to apply for things that you're qualified for. So I always put that out there. You don't want to apply if, if there's a physical therapy position with Dr. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:28:00]: Yorke and you're a computer science student and it says it's only for physical therapy students, Don't apply for the physical therapy position because that's just going to upset Dr. Yorke because she's going to have to go through everybody. So that being said, take your time. Usually there's about— usually we have about 50 to 60 assistantships per year. So it's not a lot. But they are going— the faculty are going to be reviewing anybody that applies and looking for the best fit. So it's, you know, they are going to be looking at everybody and they might interview you. It's like a job. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:28:38]: So you're going to be interviewing or you're going to be— they're going to consider you, they're going to reach out, they're going to ask questions, and then they'll try to identify who's best. If you don't get selected when you first come in, that doesn't mean you can't apply in the future. And you can always do that. And sometimes that comes down to what all 3 of our panelists have already said about getting to know your faculty. I tell students all the time that when you're in class, there's going to be times where your professor is going to say, I have an opportunity. I have a— I have something that I need some people to do. Who wants to do it? Put your hand up. Be that first one to get your hand up and volunteer. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:29:19]: Yes, it's going to take some time, but you're going to build a relationship. That relationship could lead to a graduate assistantship or some other opportunity that you never knew was coming. So that being said, even if you don't get something coming in the door, keep looking, keep applying, keep, you know, keep building those relationships because it's going to help in the future. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:29:41]: Persistence pays off. Like, being persistent matters because sometimes the first opportunity, maybe there was already somebody set for that position, but another one comes up. And based on my interaction with you, I was impressed. And I thought you would be great also on this, and then I'm more likely to reach out to you. So don't, don't, don't take it personally if you don't get it. Be persistent in a very like professional way. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:30:11]: Now, one question earlier, I think all 3 of you were talking about that students need to advocate for themselves, and if they're struggling, they should speak up. Because graduate school can be challenging, what should students do when they're struggling academically or personally rather than waiting until things become overwhelming? Shelby Newport [00:30:37]: Using those university resources. I think it's easy as a graduate student to not think of yourself like embedded in, in what a college has, but remember, probably very similar to your undergraduate experience, there is a counseling and Accessibility Services Office, and that office provides free counseling to you as a student in both online and face-to-face ways. They are really good at their job, and they are really well suited to work with students of all ages. And so that is, again, one of those benefits that is yours because you are a University of Michigan student. And so remembering that those resources exist and finding them when you know, that moment of struggle comes. Same with the library and all that the University of Michigan offers, tutoring services. And, you know, my program is inside the Rackham Graduate College, which has Ann Arbor-based resources. And so pulling on those resources is really A useful thing and a sign of a successful student. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:31:50]: And I would prefer, like, the instant you have an inkling, like, maybe I should tell my faculty this, tell them this. And it might not— like, you might not need anything from me, but, you know, like, I want to let you know that my grandfather has been placed on hospice. And so if I get a phone call, like, I might have to miss class. Like, that is the instant you know that something is going on and it may impact your ability to attend, participate in class, or complete an assessment on time. Let the faculty know. And if you— if something happened unexpectedly, the sooner that you say something, the better it is. And so I think being open and share what you want to share. Don't— Shelby Newport [00:32:37]: if you— Dr. Amy Yorke [00:32:37]: you don't have to share Details, but if you say, I'm having a family emergency, I'm gonna be out this week, my plan is that I'm gonna connect with these 2 of my classmates. If I need to meet with you, I'll email you separately. Like, that shows a very proactive student who's already trying to solve the problem, because by telling me, you're not asking me to solve the problem. You're just simply communicating to let me know ahead of time that you're something is happening in your life that really prevents you from being the kind of learner that you want to be, and sooner is better than later. Shelby Newport [00:33:21]: Yeah, question in the chat about access to the libraries in Ann Arbor. Yes, and Dearborn too, right? You have— you can check out books using your Mcard with all of those things physically and also utilize those. Parking is sort of a challenge, but there's also city street parking in a variety of places. So yeah, unfortunately, our parking passes don't have reciprocal access. But I have gone to Ann Arbor campus to work, you know, use the Wi-Fi, and that's great. Lots of resources. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:34:00]: Mohamed, were you unmuting to say something or no? Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:34:03]: Yeah, I was about to say that, and this is me speaking of my own experience with students, right? Just to also, you know, augment what Amy was saying, letting us know what you go through can help us also not— I mean, usually students think that these problems are obstacles and faculty will just give extensions to kind of— but this is not how we perceive something. You know, we perceive them as opportunities for us to also even connect more, right? I've had students who came asking for extensions. I said, no, no, no, no, no. If you are going through this, this is how we should solve this issue, right? Because there are different ways that we can address problems that you are going through, right? Whether it's in your learning curve, whether it's a family urgency, whatever it is, there are multiple ways for us to walk through this. So let us know the situation as soon as possible so that we can walk through the proper way of solving it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:34:57]: How much should students be willing to step outside of their comfort zone and ask questions, participate, and seek opportunities? And kind of secondary to that is, what do you recommend for those that are scared of stepping out of their comfort zone to get into that place where they can become comfortable being I'm going to say in that— with that imposter feeling at first, because I know that we're going to be talking about imposter syndrome right after this with everybody that's on, and every student tends to fall into it at one point or another. So how do you deal with that as well? Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:35:43]: So since I'm on mute, I'm probably going to start. So, and the imposter syndrome, at least in the context of computer science, comes from AI. And large language models being now available. And the first thing that I kind of trigger with the students is, are you able to be— to say that you're better than ChatGPT or whatever, right? Or Gemini, right? And this is how I kind of trigger that moment for them to think about how— and this is actually bringing a question that they all have in their minds. Would I be replaced? Am I replaceable? Would AI replace me in the future? Would this job exist or whatever? And I use that conversation to start advocating for how they should properly use AI and how they should also evaluate themselves and their learning curve within AI, right? Because if you are able to find yourself doing better than AI, then you definitely are valuable for industry, right? So those who misuse AI are out of the game. Those who don't use AI are out of the game. for sure. So how would you properly use AI? This is how we can trigger that conversation. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:36:49]: And this is how I can tell students to start self-assessing them, you know, self— do that self-assessment with AI to see how they can be better than AI by using AI. So, and I use this also to combat the imposter syndrome at the same time. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:37:02]: Any other thoughts, Shelby or Amy? Shelby Newport [00:37:06]: Well, yeah, I mean, I think that Yeah. Getting yourself to a place where you are willing to be and able to be vulnerable in an uncomfortable topic or feeling like you are an imposter in this world is a really good indication that you're learning. That is where change happens. That is where growth happens. And So I mean, in— I don't know that I was great at it in the beginning of graduate school. And I was definitely using my earlier advice of like, when you look good, you feel good. Like, act the part. Like, dress for the job you want and not the job you have. Shelby Newport [00:37:54]: Do that. Get yourself there and get yourself prepared for that. And then you move into those spaces. And it never goes away, I think, is also advice, right? That— and so to cultivate how do you feel and how do you recognize that uncomfortable moment where change is happening or growth is happening makes you a learner for life and a really valuable person in our— in any of our fields because you're thinking differently and you're willing. And so I feel that, like, a lot. And when you feel that feeling, that means change is happening and growth is happening. So it's an indicator rather than a barrier. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:38:42]: Yeah. And I would encourage instead of, like, using the language, like, fake it till you make it, like, try it till you triumph. Like, placing it that way. And if you I don't know if you have read or heard about Carol Dweck and like her idea of like fixed mindset versus flexible mindset, like even just doing a quick Google search and learning a little bit more about that. And I think that sometimes when we're learning something new, we come very fixed because we think that we're being judged on what we know and what we don't know. When in reality, like, you are here to grow. So you really want to embrace this more flexible mindset. Like, maybe it's just not yet. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:39:22]: I don't have it yet, but I'm going to keep working and practicing, and I'm going to keep getting better at that because repetitions matter. No matter what our profession is, the more opportunities we have to practice, the better we get at it. Shelby Newport [00:39:37]: I'll also add another catchphrase sort of like that. If you can flip your mind to a place of I get to do this instead of I have to do this, You also might, you know, get yourself into that place where change can really happen, growth can happen. We get to do this work every day, and it's really, it's pretty amazing, and that's not lost on me, and with really amazing humans like you all. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:40:05]: Now I see in the, in the chat there's some questions about where faculty put syllabi and things like that. Do you, the 3 of you, want to talk about how you do that in your courses? Shelby Newport [00:40:16]: Yeah, so Canvas is our learning management system. If you likely have access, but you probably don't have shells open yet, you might have a community shell like we have in Arts Administration, a community shell that you're automatically in. And I do announcements and things like that no matter what class you're in. So you may have access to something like that. Otherwise, your syllabi are all going to come out on a class-by-class basis, and that usually happens just a couple days before the class begins. You could reach out to faculty, specific faculty, now if you want to get a schedule or get a sense of, you know, the overall scope. You have access to the curriculum of DBA program and MSC cybersecurity. Those programs are all online and the curriculum is there. Shelby Newport [00:41:03]: That's going to tell you each of the class names and the course description that's available on the university catalog. But individual expectations and syllabi is going to come out with faculty on a semester-by-semester basis. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:41:19]: So I know like our students won't be able to access it to the day class starts, but like Shelby had offered, if you are just thinking ahead and you want to just email the faculty member, just say, I'm curious, you know, would you be willing to share it with me, or when might it be available? Just simply put a request. If I had a student today ask me for it, I would say it's not quite done yet, and I, as soon as I get it done, I will share it with you. So you can always ask. Just be prepared that you might not be able to get exactly what you want when you want it. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:41:52]: Yeah, just to put this in more context, which I think this is shared between all of us, faculty typically, they would have to do some rounds of revisions to their courses right before the semester starts. This is how we do it. We always do this right before. We take the feedback that we get from the students. We take the new updates, whatever updates we have. We also get the feedback from the peers. If the course is being taught in multiple sections, we listen and we coordinate with other faculty. And all these activities, they happen right before semester starts. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:42:22]: So therefore, syllabi may not be ready by that time. However, if you're searching for general topics that will be taught in the class, that's easy. That we can answer in a second. We can say, oh, this is what we're going to be covering in the classroom. But if you ask about the mechanics and the distribution of grades or whatever, However, this will take time, and you will know this right before the semester starts. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:42:50]: Other questions? I see we're getting close to the end of our time, and I want to make sure that we answer all of your questions before I give them a— maybe a final question. Not seeing any others yet. Let me ask you this. If you could give every incoming graduate student one piece of advice about building relationships with faculty and succeeding in graduate school, what would it be? Shelby Newport [00:43:21]: Just one is really hard, Chris. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:43:28]: You can give 2 if you want to give 2. Shelby Newport [00:43:30]: We've touched on a lot of those overarching elements today already about connection and willingness But I think that if I haven't already said the word openness as it relates to willingness, my advice would be open to what might come. Yes, you've pursued this program that is a narrowing of your interests into something really specific. So you're going to hone in on that. But how can you be open to what might come about, whether it's a line of study or a research project or any of those things? They, you know, they happen and come about when you're open to what the universe might give you. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:44:22]: I'll start with something that my father used to tell me when I was younger. He was always telling me, Mohammed, if you're doing something and it turns out to be easy, you're probably doing the wrong thing. And that somehow turns out to be true. And that's true all over my career. So if you are working and you are in your school and you're struggling with something, you're probably on the path of learning. So use that struggle as an opportunity for you to improve yourself rather than an obstacle that would prevent you from doing it. So yes, you will find issues. Yes, you will find challenges. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:44:52]: But you're here for those— you're here to go through them. And this is what makes you proud of your degree in the future. Thank you. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:45:00]: Something that I commonly say to the students is have fun and learn a lot. And so like, just learning should be fun. Doesn't mean that it's not work, and you want to learn a lot. So I'll keep it very simple. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:45:16]: So we do have a question in the chat. Someone's asking your thoughts on if someone is transitioning back to graduate-level education after a long time away from school and going from a traditional learning environment to an online learning environment, what would you recommend to them? Shelby Newport [00:45:39]: Yeah, I think that this is really common for a lot of graduate students, so you're not alone first, and the resources on campus are really good for online learning. I think we do this really well at UM-Flint. The Office of Online and Digital Education is a great place to start for kind of your own orientation to our systems. Canvas, I already mentioned, is going to be the hub for all the information— the syllabi, your grades, announcements. Some faculty use it a lot, some use it very little, but it will be that place where you can count on to see it all in one place. And so that should be bookmarked and something you check every day. And then And just like your face-to-face learning, you had time set aside in your life to go to that class. And so if your program is an asynchronous class and it's up to you to find those times, schedule those in. Shelby Newport [00:46:38]: Make the time that you are going to be doing the work of that asynchronous class. That means it doesn't have a Zoom face-to-face or online meeting, but schedule it into your life. And this is the time that I I am going to be uncompromising about what else is going on because it's as if I'm in class. So get yourself into that kind of situation, and maybe that's going to a coffee shop or going to another place so that you ready yourself for that kind of learning and the concentration you need in those online asynchronous classes. And then with online synchronous classes, that's like what we're doing tonight, though tonight we're in what's called the webinar mode, and so we can't see you. Most of your online synchronous classes are going to be in a more open format where they're, you know, you can all be boxes on the screen and there's a little bit more action and interaction happening. You know, a faculty member may share their screen and they're showing a slide deck that will then become available for you to look through, and maybe it is kind of lecturing, but if there's prompts and there's questions and there's chat activity, you're engaged in those kind of things just like you would be if you were sitting in the class. And again, that same advice of readying your for learning in that online synchronous way. Shelby Newport [00:48:00]: So some days you have to be in the car to do that. But most days, if you can find yourself that calm space that is dedicated to your learning, if it's in your house or wherever that might be, you know, gets you in the same kind of mindset that you were when you were walking into the classroom in a face-to-face way. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:48:22]: And again, don't be afraid to ask for help. So when I first started teaching, that's when I was— the first time I was like ever used a learning management system. And I, for so long, I would just try to figure things out myself before I would contact like the Office of Distance Education. So feel free. There's a 24-hour chat thing in there that you can ask somebody that, or you can contact the Office of Distance Education during normal working hours. It's pretty powerful. So like, don't be afraid to ask again. Like, don't, don't get frustrated trying to use the technology when we really want you to learn the content. Dr. Amy Yorke [00:48:57]: The technology should be relatively easy to negotiate, and if it's not, ask for help. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:49:04]: Mohammed, I see you're unmuted. Did you want to say something? Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:49:07]: Can you guys hear me? It's awesome. Yeah, so I cannot agree more with what Shelby and Amy were saying. I will try to also answer one question from Sonny, I think, about coming back to school after a while. I'll try to do this all together. I'll see how that works. So those who come back to school after a career, you're not a student. You are someone with a career coming back to school, and that career can dictate a lot of way— can contribute in so many ways to your new learning experience, right? Because we as faculty, we are also looking forward to listening to your experience, to learn back from what you have learned, what are the obstacles you faced in your career, right? And this can also enrich our conversations in the classroom. So don't be afraid of bringing all the challenges, all the issues you experienced, and also bring your expectations to the table, right? Say that this is what I have learned over the years. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:50:03]: Do you think that this would also be beneficial to me if I bring this up, right? Right? So, and I will explain to you that, I'll give you some examples. A lot of students, they bring their class projects from their work, from their careers. A lot of students, they use their thesis as a medium to solve issues in their careers. Some students, they use the assignments as mediums to develop solutions for their own problems. So all these opportunities, don't be afraid of asking faculty, can I do this this way? And they will be more than happy to guide you whether this is feasible One more thing that is specifically for online asynchronous students. If you are coming back to school and you're from industry, try to take classes synchronously more than asynchronously, right? Because, and I know this is based on my own experience, whether this applies to all the majors or not, I don't know. But I know that asynchronous students tend to have a way that they miscalibrate the effort. in the classroom. Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:51:01]: Maybe students who are asynchronous— sorry, synchronous or in-person, they go to the lecture on a regular basis, so they discover whether they are struggling or not early on. But those who are asynchronous, they treat the class as on-demand, so they discover later that they are struggling, and they are 3 weeks through the semester, and now they have an assignment, and the professor has talked about this a long time ago, and they feel you know, stressed about coming back and asking those questions late, right? So therefore, if you are an asynchronous student, start early. And as Shelby was saying, put time so that you can not just learn, but also you discover whether you are in the right pace or not. You have to pace yourself. We cannot pace you because you're not in the classroom, right? So therefore, you have to pace yourself and you discover what is the appropriate pace for you and do this very early in the semester. Shelby Newport [00:51:54]: Some of those asynchronous classes are only going to release information to you on a weekly basis. Some will release the whole thing, and then you really have to self-pace. But you'll be able to see that in the syllabus. You'll know what is expected on a week-by-week basis. Usually graduate— I mean, I don't know. I guess I shouldn't talk about all of them. But in online classes, things are structured over a one week, like week 1, week 2, week 3. And so you're thinking about it not necessarily as you may have in undergrad of like a Monday, Wednesday, but it's like weeks, week chunks of time. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:52:36]: Any final words for any of you that you want to leave the students with this evening? Dr. Amy Yorke [00:52:42]: Tammy had just put in the chat box what was the biggest obstacle overall for her. And I would say for me, I was a master memorizer. And being a master memorizer got me through undergraduate, but it did not help me be able to apply the concepts I needed to apply. And so for me, I had to change the way that I was learning content. That was a huge obstacle for me for my transition from undergrad to graduate. So don't memorize, really try to understand and apply, differentiate. Shelby Newport [00:53:15]: Yeah, and I think for me it was like recalibrating and, and re-understanding my definition of balance, which is still like a part of life now. And as life has different chapters, I still struggle with that. In graduate school, sometimes that felt like these really intense periods that I was like totally overwhelmed and didn't have time for anything else. Should it be this hard? And then other times was like, what? I think I'm supposed to be doing something right now. What am I supposed to be doing? And so And that came because I went directly from undergrad to graduate school. And so I was thinking that it was gonna be the same, and somehow it wasn't. And that the expectation of the kind of work and the intensity of work in different periods, I needed to recalibrate and redefine for myself. And I would just say that that's actually maybe my biggest obstacle in life, and that each chapter you change and figure out how that balance works for you? Dr. Mohamed Mkaouer [00:54:18]: When I, when I started my grad school, I always felt excited about going to university because I was meeting people who I always thought they're smarter than me, and this makes me really better. So I was measuring my progress by how much I learned every day, and I realized that university is the best place ever to learn because people are genuinely nice, they're smart, and they care about others. That's why they're in academia, not in industry, right? Because they're also, they care, right? And that's why I didn't want to leave this environment after finishing school, right? Because people are genuinely caring, you know? So use that and think about it that way, and you'll see how much you'll enjoy your grad school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:54:57]: Well, Dr. Yorke, Shelby, Dr. McCower, thank you so much for being here today, for sharing your experience, your wisdom with all of us. and helping our students to make that transition into graduate school and get a better perspective from you as faculty members as they prepare to connect with their faculty members. And I wish you all the best. Shelby Newport [00:55:21]: Yeah, thank you so much for having us. Thank you all for choosing UM-Flint. We're so lucky to have you in our, in our community of learners. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:55:28]: The University of Michigan-Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a Victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate journey. Thank you. on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Lessons in Graduate School Success with Dr. Bennie Harris
If you're considering graduate school—or searching for inspiration on how to thrive once you're there—the latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" is a must-listen. Host Dr. Christopher Lewis welcomes Dr. Bennie Harris, Chancellor of the University of South Carolina Upstate, to explore the transformative journey that advanced education offers. Their conversation is packed with wisdom, practical advice, and deeply personal stories that illuminate the many paths one might take through graduate school and beyond. A central theme from the episode is that the graduate school journey is unique for everyone, but learning from the experiences of others can help smooth your own path. Dr. Bennie Harris shares how his initial pursuit of engineering was driven by practicality, but his true passion for education and empowering others ultimately shaped his career. Even after obtaining his undergraduate degree, Dr. Bennie Harris realized he wasn't finished learning. His return to academia began with an MBA—chosen strategically for its flexibility across education and the private sector—and culminated with a PhD focused on strategic service marketing. Throughout the conversation, Dr. Bennie Harris emphasizes the importance of building relationships. He credits the people he met during his studies—professors, classmates, and mentors—for helping him grow intellectually and personally. These connections provided support, challenged his perspectives, and contributed to his ongoing success. Graduate school, he argues, shouldn't just be about credentials; it should be about becoming the best in your craft and using new knowledge to support and uplift the communities you serve. Another powerful message is the value of adaptability and curiosity. Dr. Bennie Harris encourages listeners to approach each stage of their graduate journey with an "empty cup"—ready to learn, unlearn, and be challenged. He shares actionable tips for navigating the politics and expectations of graduate programs, including fostering transparent communication with advisors and embracing goal-setting with room for revision. The episode wraps up with advice for those weighing graduate school: Don't just chase degrees for prestige—pursue programs that elevate your thinking and make a broader impact. Use graduate education as a means to innovate, collaborate, and give back. Ready for a dose of motivation and real-world guidance? Listen to this episode of "Victors in Grad School" and let the journeys of those who came before light your way. Your future self—and your community—will thank you. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Bennie Harris [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week we have a great opportunity to be able to work together as you are preparing yourself, For this journey that you're on. And I call it a journey because it is a journey. Every person that is thinking about graduate school, that is in graduate school, are going to go through the process a little bit differently. No one person's path is going to be exactly the same as another, but you can learn from others in what they found out in their own journey to help you in your individual journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:52]: And that's why this podcast exists. Every week, I love being able to talk to you to help you to be able to gain some tools for your tool belt. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:00:59]: Yeah. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:59]: toolbox and allow for you to be able to learn from others that have gone before you, that have gone to graduate school, been successful, and found some things that have worked for them that could work for you. And today we've got another great guest, and I'm really excited to be able to have him here with us today. Dr. Bennie Harris is with us today, and Dr. Harris is the chancellor of the University of South Carolina Upstate campus. And I am— I got to hear him speak at a recent conference that I was at, and I was really excited to be able to have come and talk to you about the educational journey that he went on and some of the things that he's learned in his own journey through graduate school and beyond into the work that he does now in education. Dr. Harris, thanks so much for being here today. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:01:45]: Thank you so much, Krista, for allowing me and inviting me. It's an honor to be here and talk about education. Education is really important to me. So thank you again. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:52]: Well, I really appreciate you being here and spending some time with us today. And one of the things that I love doing as I start these opportunities to talk is to really Turn the clock back in time. And I know that you did your undergraduate work at Mississippi State University. And when you were there, you were an engineering major, got that undergraduate degree in industrial engineering. And at some point after graduation, you had an inkling. You had an inkling that you weren't done. Take me back to that period of time where you were out in the workforce, you just— and you said to yourself, you know what, I'm not done. I need to go back to school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:28]: What was going through your head? Dr. Bennie Harris [00:02:29]: I made a decision to go back to graduate school while I was an undergraduate. And actually, the way that happened was I had been an engineer. I was at co-op for a year. I had did another summer program at Mississippi Power and Light Company at co-op, and I'd come to learn enough about myself during this time in college to realize that engineering was not my passion. However, I had gone so far in and had invested so much time into it, it was not prudent to make a change. And so I did work as an industrial engineer for a brief time, but I immediately found a course back to higher education. I was going to get a master's degree in student personnel. Actually, I wanted to be a math teacher. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:03:09]: And Mississippi during my time, you know, you did say let's go back. And so we're going way back. And Mississippi during my time, educators were not paid much. And so growing up poor rural community, and it was more prudent for me to follow my intellectual skills of science and mathematics and pursue engineering and to get a pathway out of poverty. But along the way, I kind of found my passion. And my passion really was empowering other people, particularly the peers that I were around. So I got excited about that. I was going to change my major after my junior year to education. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:03:41]: I took all my records over to the College of Education, and the way they were structured, it was going to take me another 3 years to graduate. I had to go and do all these prereqs. I said, nope, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to go ahead and stay focused and get my engineering degree. And so I came to a place where after I graduated, trying to figure out how to get back into higher education, A mentor of mine invited me back to be her graduate assistant. Before that took place, she took a job at Washington State University, and she then had opportunities available in her office. She was at the time the director of affirmative action special programs, and so she had a compliance coordinator. I was good at statistics and other types of technical skills, and so she thought that my skills aligned with the work, and so she offered me an opportunity. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:04:23]: So I went out to Washington State sight unseen. and became the best compliance and EEO coordinator I could be. I learned as much as I could about the law, about the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, the Office of Civil Rights, the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, and you would have thought I was an expert. At least I presented myself that way. So that's kind of how I got on that tread. And when I got into that, I knew I wanted to get a master's degree. So Washington State paid for employees while I went to school, so I decided to get an MBA in strategic marketing. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:53]: So talk to me about that, because there's lots of— I know Washington State, and Washington State's a big institution, so you have an opportunity to go into a lot of different directions. You chose, like you said, to do the MBA. Talk to me about that decision. What was the reason for you that you decided that versus something else? Dr. Bennie Harris [00:05:10]: Well, what I came to realize while I was at Washington State University doing the work that I was doing, I was also was able to follow my passion around student empowerment. So I started a leadership conference called Black Male Orientation to Leadership Development where I was developing young men across the state of Washington, and it became a conference that was over Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and we had a few folks coming from California, and we ended up having about 600 young people to come up across those states to develop leadership. And so I was able to do that part of my passion. Our president was supportive of that, my boss was supportive of that. At that time I had promoted, etc., and I was becoming much more focused around the business of education. And so I didn't treat affirmative action or EEO or compliance like the regular compliance agenda of an institution. I approached it more as a partnership with our deans, with our colleges, And so what I realized is that higher education did not do a good job at marketing itself even then. It didn't do a great job at telling the story, did not do a great job at— and the word telling the story was not the word in terms that we used during that time, but really bringing people along and saying, here's the why. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:06:31]: So Washington State was under an Office of Federal Contract Compliance They had had an audit, they had failed that audit, and they had to recreate some of their policies. And they recreated because they just weren't following their own processes. So, so I went to the deans and I went to the vice president and said, what is it that you want to accomplish? Let's create policies that are legally viable and policies that accomplish that. So we would do a partner's accommodation. Where if you recruited someone in biochemistry who— and coming out to Pullman, Washington, it was not a metropolitan, so we had to get as much workforce as we can. Then if he or she had a partner and they needed a job, then if there was a position available within the institution, then that the institution needed— let's say that partner was in a faculty in criminal justice. Or something like that, then the Provost's Office will give 2 years of funding for that Criminal Justice Department to hire that faculty on a temp appointment, and then that person will be competitive for a permanent job in that particular college. So it increased our ability to elevate diversity at the institution, and it— instead of our search committees doing a workaround the search process, I became more of a partner. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:07:57]: That really helped me to understand that we need to be a lot more strategic in how we talk about our partnerships, how we talk about elevating. And I wanted to position myself if I wanted to go back into engineering at any point. So I said an MBA could do both. It could align with higher education and it could align with any future aspiration I potentially may have when I decide I want to make some money. So I'm still thinking about that too. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:24]: Now, before I get into it, because I want to talk about these transitions that you're making, but I also know that a number of years after you got your MBA, you made a decision to keep going with that education, and you decided to get a doctorate degree. Talk to me about that and what made you decide that you wanted to jump back in after a few years. off of not being in education in that, in that regard? Dr. Bennie Harris [00:08:52]: I think that's what graduate school really offers. As you pivot and as you grow and mature and become more informed as to where your passions are and who you are and what your aspirations— and that changes. I'm one that believes that as you set goals, that you give yourself permission to edit those goals. And so annually I will look at my goals and my wife and I will look at goals and that banned affirmative action, etc., in admissions processes in California. And so kind of saw the writing on the wall, and I had— I did my project, a project in my MBA with Weyerhaeuser Corporation in Tacoma and total quality management. And I was looking to say, okay, I'm going to go back into industry and do total quality management. The president, Sam Smith, at the time, and my the Vice President for Institutional Advancement, Connie Kravis, had appealed to me to stay at the institution and to see if there was anything else across the institution that I wanted to do other than where I was, right? And so Connie was trying to recruit me into Institutional Advancement because I was working with her in my other capacity to help increase the diversity and the gender representation across her division in advancement. And that went exceptionally well. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:10:36]: We— people would say, well, we can't find them, we can't get them. And we've been extremely successful at Washington State in recruiting highly talented people to Pullman, Washington, in the Palouse. We had deans who were of color. We had a woman vice president for business affairs. We had a woman provost that came along. We had all of these executives of all diverse backgrounds. that were coming and attracted to Washington State, and it debunked the myth that nobody will come, that we can't get them, right? So she said, Bennie, I think you'll be a great fundraiser. And I'm like, you know what, I have no interest in being a great fundraiser. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:11:14]: I got to be very careful what I say because this is a live podcast. I have no interest. My image of being a fundraiser was Driving Miss Daisy, and I did not see myself pushing no old gray-haired women to the symphony to ask them for money. That was just not in my cup of tea. So she sent me to a case conference to learn about fundraising, and I went to this case conference at Dartmouth, this training, a week-long training. And they had all the— they introduced us to annual giving, planned giving, corporate and foundation relations, major gifts, principal gifts, all the different areas of institutional advancement, prospect research. And then I came back and talked to her executive team, and she said, if we offer you a job, what would it be? I said, if I did it, it would probably be corporate and foundation relations because I have an engineering background. I write relatively decently. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:12:06]: I think I can appeal and make a case for why industry should invest and foundations should invest into our institution. So she offered me a job on the spot to do that, but because I didn't have experience in this space, professional experience. I had volunteer experience, etc. I came in as an associate director for corporate and foundation relations, and then I, as I proved myself, I quickly promoted. Now I share that because what I was looking for at that time was a change. I was looking for a change, and I wasn't quite sure where I wanted to go, but I know I was young. I was recently married and I knew that I needed more income or I wanted more income. So I was thinking about going back to industry. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:12:51]: I even thought about going to law school. And I was looking at going across the country. My wife and I had— they'd only had our first child. And so I was like, I gotta get to a place where I can work and go to law school. And then I was going to do corporate law and litigation, those type of things. And it was Had to be January. I had done the— I had done my LSAT, had done a decent job on taking that. I had done Kaplan, all that kind of stuff. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:13:22]: I had interviewed, and not formally interviewed, but I had went to several law schools, met with deans, met with the people in the admissions committee. And in January of 1996, that desire was completely taken away from me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:38]: Why? Dr. Bennie Harris [00:13:39]: I had zero desire— though, in January of 1997, right? I had zero desire to do law because it wasn't what my passion— I was motivated by money, but it wasn't what my passion was. So, um, I got a job offer in the summer because my wife wanted to go back to— we had had our first child, she wanted to be closer to Mississippi where her family was, and I had committed to do that for her after me being 7 years in the Pacific Northwest, she being 5 years there with me. We took a job at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and that's— it was there that I decided on a PhD because I was doing external affairs and advancement work to support their campaign. But what I recognized is that people did not appreciate what was happening in higher education, and we had legislators who were writing legislation that was anti-higher education, and they spent 4 or 5 years with us And how is it that we did not make them evangelists for what we do and our value? Their kids were— had degrees, they had degrees, yet they were writing legislation that said a 4-year degree in higher education was not necessary. And I'm saying necessary for whom? Everybody else? Your kids, but no one else, right? So, so that made me get my PhD. I was going to get it in strategic marketing to look at marketing higher education institutions, and UAB did not have a PhD program, so I had to get it through the graduate school. I did a joint program with UA and UAB that I did my dissertation, my research on service quality, looking at how do you elevate and assess quality and the value proposition for a service environment, something that you don't own a product. but you own the experience and you own the credential of that. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:15:30]: And so that's what influenced me to get my PhD. And as a result of that, I thought, okay, I'm gonna now be on a platform where I can do research, I can write, I can become an advocate for higher education, and I can help higher education institutions pivot how they tell their story, how they market themselves, and how they create alliance with this dedicated captive audience during these 4, 4 to 6 years that you have them. So when they graduate from us, they're going to go out and tell everybody how great we are and go straight into the legislators or into industry and be our biggest advocate. That was my vision for that. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:08]: Now, you went to 3 different types of institutions. And as you go from one type of institution to the next, from different levels into different types of colleges, schools, etc., You have to go through transitions. The transition from undergrad into your MBA, your MBA into your doctorate, and in between you're doing work and getting other experiences. But as you transition into those educational environments, there are different expectations. There are different perspectives from faculty. Your faculty are definitely, as I said, they are going to be expecting different things from you as an individual, and you have to figure out what those— both the written rules and the unwritten rules are as you're moving through those, those specific types of degrees. So talk to me about as you transitioned into your MBA, into your doctorate degree, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success before you got in and as you started the program? And what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout each of those individual degrees? Dr. Bennie Harris [00:17:19]: So one of the things— thank you, that's a great question. One of the things that was consistent through my whole experience, educational experience, is people. People were consistent, and how I work and engage people and the relationships I built. I have wonderful relationships still to this day from undergraduate faculty and staff and colleagues all the way through this. So I have folks all over the United States. and over the country— globe, rather— that Stefan Wagner, he's a professor at Zurich. I have Chi-Wei Lo. All these folks I met during my educational experience that I kept in touch with. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:18:00]: Jeevan Rago, executives. He was from India. So, and we still talk to this day, and we're talking 30-plus or longer, about 30-plus years, right? where you belong, being able to navigate that. I think at the podcast I talked about my mother teaching me to live with an empty cup, and having that empty cup in these relationships was very critical. Then going to the Pacific Northwest where the state was less than 2% African American, and Seattle was probably about 6% at the time, and the first African American I saw in Washington State in Pullman became my best friend, probably. So, so that mattered. But what it did for me was help me to challenge my own biases, helps me to challenge how I see things, helped me to have this empty cup, come in there with that where people can pour their authenticity into me, and for me to step away from my own biases, uh, that I brought to that conversation, to that encounter, became the thing that made me better, became the thing that, that, that allowed folks to invite me to the table, right? Those are things that I learned as a person maturing as a young man and going to professional session— a professional setting in my career. I'm starting to mature. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:19:44]: I'm starting to see life differently. I'm starting to see that my story doesn't corner the market on oppression, and there were other people who have oppressed stories. that they've overcame and that giving them respect and deference to that and to their victory out of those things or their culture out of those things really only empowered me and strengthened me and strengthened my voice in telling my story by embracing the legitimacy of theirs. Whether I think it's legitimate or not, to them it is legitimate and I learned to embrace that and not judge it. One of the best examples of that, I think her name was Beth friends, so I'm putting names out there. But she was the director of the Women's Center at Washington State University, and I had just come from Mississippi. Everything is formal— ladies and gentlemen, yes ma'am, no ma'am, all this kind of stuff. And so I did a speech for a Martin Luther King program, and I opened it, ladies and gentlemen. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:20:38]: After that speech, uh, I think Beth came up to me. I think this was Beth. And they— she said, I am offended by that. I said, what? What did I do? She said, I am no lady, and I don't need you to open doors for me. I don't need you to do this, and all this kind of stuff. Because there was a bias in my Southern culture is that women have certain roles. Now, I didn't think I discriminated against women, but she helped. When she and I sat down, she explained to me, said, Bennie, when you were born, you have— you were— I don't think we called it unconscious bias then. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:21:11]: You were given a Tonka truck and a blue shirt, and your sister was given a doll and a pink blanket. And we were setting the expectations around your role in society whether you realize it or not. So she educated me around that unconscious bias that I, as a man, may have, right? What does that have to do with me pivoting all these graduate experiences? Everything. Because I took that experience of having to deal with my advisors, my faculty at Washington State University in the MBA program, and was extremely successful there. When I came to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and I had these advisors who had their own expertise, and none of them had necessarily had the expertise that I was looking to research, except I had an advisor from the College of Business. I had to help them to get their own biases out of the way as I try to pursue my PhD. So what I learned to do, and I tell folks that, young people that are all the time, that the best degree is a finished one. So I had to get out of my way, right? And, and, and so my doctoral thesis dissertation wasn't about trying to change the world, but how do I take this funnel and narrow it down and find this little piece that I'm going to research? And so when I talk to this advisor, he wants to see me this way, and I talked to this committee member, they want to see me this way. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:22:35]: So what I did from the very beginning, I will send a memo. To every last one, every committee, every meeting I had with any of my academic, my committee members, I was going to follow up with a memo. Thank you, Dr. Lewis, for a great conversation. Per our discussion, I would do X, Y, and Z. This aligns very well with what Dr. So-and-so told me, and I'm going to integrate that, and I will send you all a revised version. So what I was trying to do, what I was doing, I think, was taking away the politics, mitigating, not taking away, mitigating the politics of her PhD among your committee members and create accountability among themselves, among the committee, so that they wouldn't be sending me this way and they send me that way and I'm looking like a chicken with my neck cut off and I'm frustrated and I'm in the room crying. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:23:19]: I've got anxiety around that. I just made them a part of my council, part of my committee. I'm not a committee, but a part of my tribe. And that tribe was how do we move this particular PhD candidate, student first and then candidate, through this process in the most seamless way. So I completed my PhD working full-time. Actually, I just did a post about it this past Sunday, working full-time with children, with the wife who was working on her master's degree. I did it all, what has taken an average of 7 years. I did it in right at 4 years. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:23:56]: And I did it, and it was a very, very successful, positive one. I completed it, defended, and I had colleagues that were still struggling after— who were in my cohort, who were still struggling with their PhD until I stopped following them. So I don't know if they got it or not. I probably should go back and figure that out. But it had all to do with being able to Appreciate the culture that you're in. Appreciate the setting and the expectations of others. And how do those expectations align with my aspirations? And then bringing that through conversation with your advisor, with your committee members, having conversation with them more than just transactional conversations, but having conversation about their aspirations to bring them into your story and make them a part of what you aspire to do and what you are going to do. So they can say, I had a little part in what he became. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:25:02]: Now, each of your education opportunities that you took advantage of were a little bit different. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:25:07]: Yeah. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:25:07]: They were in different type of educational environments. They were at different types of institutions and at— and in different areas. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:25:15]: Yeah. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:25:15]: So talk to me a little bit about Now, I mean, you've completed your degrees, you've had those done for a while, you've continued to grow, and you've had other educational opportunities as well. But how do you feel that your graduate degrees helped prepare you for the role that you're in now and how you may be pulling from that on a daily basis? Dr. Bennie Harris [00:25:39]: Oh, if I If I was a fortune teller or soothsayer, I would say that I was able to see all of this in the future, but I did not. And what all of this means is there is so much value into an educational leader understanding P&L, understanding budgets and finance. That's everything we do. Every decision is made around, do we have the money for it? Can we afford it? What are the revenues that are coming to this institution? from the state, from the federal government. Is that revenue pivot? How do we put some of these projects that were on soft money onto some of the recurring dollars? How do we create ROIs for new program ideas? How do we— all of that you do not want. It is so powerful and empowering to be able to lead an organization, understand the finance behind it. That was my MBA program, right? It was so empowering to be able to know how do I negotiate all the noise of what's in higher education. There was a time when we can count the number of MBA programs in our region. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:26:44]: Now there's so plethora that you can't count it. So how do I amplify USC Upstate in such a way that our program is seen and heard among the many, many, many programs that are out there? Hence my PhD And my emphasis in service marketing, strategic service marketing at University of Alabama. So that PhD helped me to look at my institution as a regional public university and say, how do I differentiate our institution from the others? That's one of the things that led me into having a podcast and a podcast. I'm focusing exclusively on leadership. And I'm bringing them to the table, folks like CEOs from, from industry, nonprofits, educational, talking about USC Upstate. Then I have those podcast conversations transcribed and put into the business journal throughout the state of South Carolina. And so people are reading that. So I get calls from Charleston, I get calls from Columbia, I get calls from all over the state of South Carolina saying, I didn't know USC Upstate was doing that. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:27:54]: Or saying, how can I get on that podcast? I never imagined that to be those type of ancillary benefits, but I did know that I needed to get my message out. I did know that I need to amplify our voice as an institution and say, look and see what we're doing. I write monthly op-eds around education, around the changes that are taking place, around the value of education, around first-generation students every month. and the local paper, which has a far-reaching— the Post and Courier has a far-reaching regional arm. So people are beginning to see— I believe my role as a higher education leader in today's market is to not just impact my regional market and my local market, but also impact how people see us nationally and see the value of education nationally. The value of education It's so critical, and what I am so committed to as an educational leader, passionate about what I do, is that we, we do not dumb down our intellectual capacity as a country, that we don't move everything away from innovation and from research and from— even though we're not a research university, but that is, that's what gave, that is what gave us our competitive advantage, that we invite intellectual knowledge to the table wherever it comes from, globally, That's what happened in World War II. That's what happened in all— it wasn't just our intelligence that made us competitive. It was that of Jewish people, it was that of other scientists, etc., all around the globe, right? So I'm very leery when we swing too far saying technical colleges are all what we need. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:29:38]: We need to make sure people can do forklifts and have— can have a be able to drive trucks, etc., etc., knowing that within a couple years those trucks are going to be driving themselves remotely. And so we have now educated a complete workforce on driving trucks and we have displaced that workforce. Much of what probably happened in Flint and many other places in, in your region around automation, etc. So we tool people for these skills and then we develop technology that make those skills irrelevant. That's where education and higher education has to step in and make sure we are seen and say our voice is more than just that. And then we have to make sure that we don't see us ourselves as not knowing how to deal with people and culture and humanity and listening and communication. All those humanities are so critical to making us a civilization. And that's what I think graduate school— let me take it back to where we started. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:30:37]: That's where I think graduate education is so critical. is because it elevates our awakening to say, what else should we be thinking about? Who else should we become? And how do we continue to learn at a higher and higher and higher level so that we can maximize our society in the very best way possible? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:30:58]: Now, as you think back to your graduate education and what you've gone through in your past, and you think about others that are thinking about going to graduate school themselves, What are some tips that you might offer others that are considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Dr. Bennie Harris [00:31:18]: Um, there are a whole bunch of degrees just to have them. Like, I just want to be a doctor. So, um, and I caution you from absorbing a lot of debt just to be okay. Um, you know, if you need to, if you need that for your ego, then that's okay. But I think it's so much more powerful to take it and do what it was designed to do. How do we elevate the thinking of that experience? How do we elevate that space with that particular degree? So a lot of degrees, things that we used to do just to get the certification in, well, we did it because we wanted How do I make this community that I work in better with this particular graduate degree and graduate knowledge? And it happens, and it makes a difference. It causes you to think differently. It causes you to engage differently. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:32:40]: And that's what people have to understand. When you think about when you go into a graduate degree program, you're going to have peers that are in there with you who are looking for something that makes them better. not just make me a better person, but intellectually more competitive. I want to learn more. I want to increase my curiosity, which when you increase curiosity, increase learning, what that does, it innovates, creates innovation, and it makes society very better, much better. So I think graduate degrees should be looked at or could be looked at as less of a transactional credential to get you that next paycheck or next pay bump and more of one that's really, really making society better and making this environment, this organization, this job, all those things better. So whether you get your graduate degree in computer science and data analytics or whether you get your graduate degree in music, you're becoming the best at your craft and we don't want society to lose that. We do not want young people to be okay being mediocre. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:33:52]: And we want people to go through a graduate program that is developed and coached by intellectuals so that you can know what this— how to use this knowledge that you are acquiring, how to make it even more effective, how to make it smarter, those things. So it's an and. You're going to get it to continue to improve yourself professionally, get a better job, all of those, and use it to improve folks and people around you. I'm not saying go and say, I got a graduate degree, so I'm better. No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that a graduate education should equip you to see things differently and to see where you can improve those things and where you can contribute, to see how you can have different type of conversations with people, to bring them together, to get that training intellectually, to have more understanding about culture and about experiences so that I can come better prepared with an empty cup to receive that, what I've learned. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:34:58]: Well, Dr. Harris, you mentioned just a little bit ago that you have a podcast called Below the Line, and I'm sure that that's one of the best ways for people to get a hold of you. But tell me a little bit more about, or tell us about a little bit more about Below the Line. And where people can find it if they want to learn more. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:35:16]: Well, below the line really is really what we're talking about when we, when we lead, when we make decisions. Oftentimes, and I, I coined this term, but I can't take complete ownership of it because I heard it initially from a previous president that I served under, and he was a conflict manager. He did conflict management. And so part of what we were learning is when you do fundraising, for example, and I come and ask somebody to make a commitment to this institution and they have something to say, well, yeah, I'll do that. And it's, it is, it's minuscule in comparison to their capacity. When you talk to them more, you start learning what's really below that conversation. What is really, what are they really passionate about? They could have been had pain associated. Their son got kicked out of school, at that same school that you're asking them to give money for. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:36:14]: That's keeping them from making that bigger gift. So that was the context which I kind of came to appreciate that term below the line. I added leading. How do we lead? When I come to an organization and I have this great vision and it's not moving the way I think it should move, what's going on? Well, people could have PTSD from prior relationships, from a prior chancellor, from prior experiences. So I got to get below the line so that I can get them to make these types of decisions. So the whole thing is, how do you lead when you don't know what the issues are that's keeping your team from moving forward? That's what Below the Line is all about. And you can listen to that on— it's on Spotify, it's on YouTube, just Below the Line, Chancellor Bennie Lee Harris or Bennie Harris. or Below the Line USC Upstate, and it should pop up on a number of, uh, uh, venues, whatever they call it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:37:09]: Well, Dr. Harris, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for your time today, for your— for you sharing your own background. And I am— I've definitely listened to a few of the episodes already in Below the Line. They're very powerful episodes, and you have some really amazing guests on there. So as you said, it What you're talking about does connect with what we're talking about here. So I highly encourage you to listen and to check it out for yourself. But Dr. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:37:37]: Harris, thank you for being here, and I truly wish you all the best. Dr. Bennie Harris [00:37:41]: Thank you very much, Kristin. I appreciate your inviting me, and I love the conversation. Thank you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:37:45]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a Victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Understanding the Different Financial Realities of Master's and PhD Programs
Choosing to attend graduate school is a big step, and with it comes the crucial question: how do the financial realities differ between master's programs and PhD programs? In the latest episode of "Victors in Grad School," Dr. Christopher Lewis dives into the complexities and key considerations surrounding the true costs and funding options for these advanced degrees. One of the main takeaways from the episode is that graduate school is far from one-size-fits-all—not only academically, but also financially. Dr. Christopher Lewis highlights how, while both paths are graduate degrees, master's and PhD programs usually come with distinct cost structures, funding models, and potential financial risks. For many, a master's degree might offer faster entry into a new career or desired promotion, but may require more out-of-pocket payment or student loans. Conversely, a funded PhD program can be more affordable in terms of direct costs (like tuition and fees) because of waivers, stipends, and assistantships, but often comes with its own opportunity costs—such as a longer period on a lower stipend instead of a full-time professional salary. Throughout the episode, Dr. Christopher Lewis gives actionable advice for anyone considering graduate school. He encourages listeners to compare not just the sticker price of programs, but the net price—the actual cost after factoring in scholarships, stipends, waivers, and assistantships. He explains why it's essential to ask programs for detailed, written offers outlining what funding is available and under what conditions. Calculating the debt-to-income ratio that would result from each program is another practical tip: ideally, your anticipated debt shouldn't exceed your first-year full-time salary in the field. Other themes include the importance of researching career outcomes for each program, understanding the average debt and salaries of recent graduates, and looking closely at the adequacy of stipends—especially in expensive cities. Asking about long-term career support, job placement rates, and additional opportunities, such as conferences and internships, will ensure you make the best decision for your future. Whether you're weighing a master's program with upfront costs or a funded PhD that requires several years of commitment, this episode is packed with strategies and questions every future grad student should consider. Ready to make an informed decision about your graduate education? Don't miss this episode of "Victors in Grad School"—it's essential listening for anyone considering an advanced degree! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:02]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Today, we're going to be talking again about some of the financial realities of graduate programs. And I know we've been talking about this over the last few weeks, but we're going to be talking a little bit more in depth Today about some important questions that you should be thinking about, and especially how do the financial realities of master programs, master's programs, and PhD programs differ? Now, that may sound like a simple question, but it's actually one of the most important questions that you can ask when you're deciding what kind of graduate education makes sense for you. Graduate school is not a one-size-fits-all, and graduate school financing is definitely Not one size fits all. A master's degree and a PhD may both be graduate degrees, but they often come with very different cost structures, funding models, timelines, risks, and career outcomes. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:09]: For some students, a master's degree may be the fastest and most practical way for you to be able to get to that career advancement that you want. For others, a funded PhD may be the better financial fit. Especially if you have goals that involve research, academia, or highly specialized professional work. But there isn't a universal answer. The right choice depends on your field, your career goals, your financial situation, your tolerance for debt, your existing loan history, your timeline, and your ultimate long-term plans. So today we're going to break down some of the most common differences in lending needs between master's and PhD students. I'm going to talk to you about tuition support, assistantships, stipends, loan limits, opportunity costs, private loan risks, and how to compare offers before you commit. As always, this episode is not individual financial advice. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:11]: Students, students should confirm details with financial aid professionals, graduate program staff, and official federal student aid resources. But the goal today is to help you to ask better questions and to make more informed decisions. So let's get started. As I mentioned here already today, graduate school financing is not the same for every degree. As a prospective graduate student and as you are exploring graduate school, so many students are focusing on the program title, you know, the Master of Public Health, the PhD in Public Science, the PhD in Education. You know, whatever the title is, those titles matter. But they don't tell the whole financial story. 2 graduate programs can have similar career outcomes and very different costs. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:01]: 2 programs in the same field can have very different levels of funding. A shorter program may cost more out of pocket than a longer program. A longer program may provide funding but delay full-time earnings. A prestigious program may offer a powerful network but require more borrowing. A funded program may reduce debt but require years of lower income while enrolled. That's why students need to look beyond admission and ask, what is the financial model of this program? In general, master's students and PhD students often face different financial realities. Master's students are more likely to pay tuition themselves unless they have scholarships, fellowships, employer support, or institutional aid. PhD students, especially those in funded doctoral programs, are more likely to receive tuition waivers, stipends, teaching assistantships, research assistantships, or fellowships. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:03]: Of course, there are exceptions. Some master's programs offer generous funding. Some PhD programs are not fully funded. Some professional programs have high costs, but student but strong salaries upon graduation. So students should always ask their specific programs more about the situation in general. But as a general starting point, master's and PhD financing often work very differently. So let's begin with master's students. Master's programs are typically shorter than PhD programs. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:37]: Many full-time master's degrees take between 1 And half years and 3 years, 1.5 to 3 years to complete, depending on the field curriculum, internship requirements, clinical hours, and whether the student attends full-time or part-time. Because they're shorter, students sometimes assume that master's degrees are automatically more affordable, and sometimes they are, but not always. Many master's students pay tuition unless they receive institutional scholarships, fellowships, employer tuition assistance, or other support. And in many fields, master's students are less likely than PhD students to receive full tuition waivers or paid teaching and research assistantships. That means master's programs can require significant borrowing, even though it's shorter. Depending on the institution and the program, annual costs of a self-funded master's student can range anywhere from $20,000 to $80,000 or more, And that can include tuition, fees, books, supplies, housing, transportation, health insurance, and living expenses. Now, a master's degree can still be a very strong investment. It can lead to promotion, a licensure pathway, a career change, a salary increase, or entry into a profession that requires the credential. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:01]: But students need to understand the net cost, not just the sticker price. Not just the first semester bill, the cost to complete the degree. This is essentially— this is especially important as changes in federal lending may affect borrowing options for graduate students. With the elimination of Grad PLUS loans for new borrowers and the introduction of new federal borrowing caps, some students may find that federal loans don't cover the full cost of the higher-cost master's degree, and that can create a gap. And that gap may need to be covered through scholarships, employer benefits, savings, income payment plans, or private loans. So before enrolling in a master's program, students really need to be asking, what's the full cost of completing the degree? How much institutional aid is available for master's students? Are Are scholarships renewable or are they only for the first year? Are assistantships offered to master's students? Are paid internships, practicums, or graduate employment opportunities available? Will federal loans cover the cost of attendance? And if federal loans aren't enough, what other options are available? All of these questions help students understand whether the program is financially feasible and whether the expected outcome— Justifies the investment. So that's master's students. Now let's talk about PhD students. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:33]: Doctoral programs, especially research-based PhD programs, often operate under a different financial model. Many funded PhD programs provide tuition waivers, stipends, teaching assistantships, research assistantships, or fellowships in these programs that allow for students to pay little or no tuition directly. They may also receive an annual stipend, which helps to cover living expenses. For students in funded doctoral programs, the typical annual cost to the student may be relatively low. In some cases, after accounting for stipend support, students may pay between $0 and $5,000 a year out of pocket, depending on local cost of living— Depending on local cost of living and personal expenses. That can make a funded PhD financially attractive compared with a self-funded master's program, but there's another side of the equation. PhD programs are long. A full-time PhD may take 4 to 7 years, depending on the discipline, research progress, dissertation requirements, advising, funding, and program structure. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:42]: So while a funded PhD may reduce the overall debt that a student has to take out for tuition, It may also— it may also mean spending more years on a graduate stipend rather than earning a full-time professional salary, and that creates what we call opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is the value of what you give up when you choose one path over another. For PhD students, that may include several years of full-time salary, employer retirement contributions, professional advancement, and other benefits that might have come from entering or staying in the workplace. That doesn't mean that a PhD is a bad choice. For many students, a PhD is exactly the right choice. It may be essential for their research, their goals, academic careers, scientific training, or specialized professional aspirations. But students should also consider the full picture. Prospective PhD students really need to be asking, is the degree funding guaranteed? And if it is, how many years is it guaranteed for? Does it include tuition, fees, health insurance, a stipend? Is summer funding included? What work obligations are attached to the funding? Will you as a student be expected to teach or conduct research? Can the stipend be negotiated? Are there additional fellowship opportunities? And what happens if you need more time to finish? A funded PhD can reduce borrowing, but students still need to evaluate stipend adequacy, time-to-degree completion rates, and long-term career outcomes. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:18]: So now that you've learned a little bit about both the master's and the PhD, let's compare these 2 paths a little bit more directly. A funded PhD and a self-funded master's program may lead to related careers, but the financial experience can look very different. For a funded PhD, the annual cost to the student may be— the annual cost to you may be low, especially if tuition is waived and a stipend is provided. Federal loan need may be low as well. The risk of reaching Federal lifetime borrowing caps may also be lower, especially if you enter the program with little or no federal debt. Private loan risk is at— is usually lower for funded PhD programs because tuition is often covered and borrowing may be limited due to living expenses or personal needs. A self-funded master's program can look very different. Annual costs may range from $20,000 to $80,000 or more. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:16]: While federal loan need may be high depending on the total program cost and the student's existing debt, there may be greater risk of reaching federal borrowing limits. And if federal loans don't cover the full cost, the student may need to consider private loans. That doesn't mean that a fully funded PhD is always the better financial choice. The master's program may take only 2 years and may lead to faster entry into the workforce. If the degree leads to strong salary growth, a promotion, or access to a high-demand field, it may produce strong returns despite the higher upfront cost. The PhD may take longer, which may delay full-time earnings, but if the student's goal requires doctoral training, or if this PhD leads to academic research or leadership roles that would otherwise be inaccessible, it may be the right investment. Ultimately, the point is that you cannot compare graduate programs by tuition alone. You have to compare cost, funding, time, debt, opportunity cost, completion likelihood, career outcome, and long-term fit. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:20]: So How should you evaluate these options? My first recommendation is simple: request funding offers in writing before committing. A written funding offer should clearly state what the program is offering and what conditions apply. Students often look for details such as tuition support, fees covered and not covered, stipend amounts, health insurance, duration of funding, renewal requirements, teaching, research, or service expectations, summer support, and what happens if you take longer than expected to complete the program. This is especially important for PhD students, but it also matters for master's students who receive scholarships, fellowships, or assistantships. So in the end, the key message is don't rely only on verbal assurances. Graduate school is too significant a commitment for vague funding details. Get the offer in writing, read it carefully, Ask questions, and keep a copy for your records. My second recommendation is to compare net price, not sticker price. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:22]: Sticker price is the published cost. Net price is what you actually pay after grants, scholarships, fellowships, tuition waivers, assistantships, employer contributions, or any other type of gift aid that you receive. The distinction matters a lot. A private university with a high tuition rate may become more affordable if it provides generous scholarships. A public university may appear less expensive, but still require significant borrowing if aid is limited. A PhD program may list a high tuition rate, but if the tuition is fully waived, as a student, your actual cost may be much lower. So when you're comparing programs, you need to ask each program some of the following. You need to find out the total cost of attendance, the total grants and scholarships that are available, the total tuition waiver or assistance support that's available, the total out-of-cost expenses, the total expected borrowing, and the total expected debt at graduation. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:23]: If you compare only tuition, you may make the wrong decision. Compare net price. That's the number that matters. My third recommendation is to calculate your expected debt-to-income ratio at graduation. A general guideline is that your Total graduate debt should not exceed your expected first-year salary in your chosen field. Now, it's not a perfect science or a rule. There are exceptions. Some fields have low starting salaries but strong growth. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:52]: Some students qualify for loan forgiveness. Some students have family support or savings. Some programs lead to careers with high long-term earnings. But as a starting point, this guideline can help you evaluate whether your debt will be manageable. For example, if you expect to earn $60,000 in your first year after graduation, taking on $60,000 in debt may be manageable depending on repayment options and living costs. Taking on $150,000 in debt for that same salary may create much more financial pressure. So in the end, you need to ask, what's the average debt level for graduates from the program? What are typical starting salaries? What do graduates earn after after 5 or 10 years? How quickly do graduates typically repay their loans? Are graduates entering public service fields that may qualify for public service loan forgiveness? Are salaries in the field stable or growing or highly variable? The goal is not to reduce the number of graduates in a graduate program based on a salary number. Graduate education can have intellectual, personal, and social value as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:05]: But debt has to be repaid. So it is important to understand how expected earnings and expected debt fit together. My fourth recommendation is to look for programs that provide clear and transparent career outcomes. Before enrollment, you need to be asking what percentage of graduates are employed within 6 months or a year? What percentage of— are working in their intended field? Where do graduates typically work? What job titles do recent graduates hold? What percentage continue to doctoral or professional study? What are typical salaries? What internships Internships, practicums, research opportunities, or networking opportunities are available? And how does the program support career development? All of these questions and more are ones that are going to be really important because if a program cannot provide employment data, salary ranges, alumni examples, or career support, then you're going to need to make sure that you continue to ask more questions to get more answers if they don't have others that can answer that for you. My 5th and final recommendation is specifically for PhD students. Ask detailed questions about the stipend. A tuition waiver is important, but students still have to live. Rent, food, transportation, healthcare, professional conference travel, technology, books, childcare, and personal expenses all matter. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:25]: A stipend that looks reasonable in one city may be very difficult to live on in another. So prospective PhD students should definitely be asking, what's the annual stipend? Is it guaranteed? Is it paid over 9 months or 12 months? Is summer funding available? And are fees covered? Is health insurance included? Are students allowed to work outside the program? Does the department provide conference or research travel support? How does the stipend compare with living cost expenses? Are there internal or external fellowships students commonly receive? And can the stipend be negotiated? The last question may feel uncomfortable, but it's worth asking respectfully, especially if you have competing offers. Even a modest stipend increase can make a meaningful difference over 4, 5, 6, or 7 years. A fully funded PhD is only truly sustainable if students can meet their basic living needs while making academic progress. So in closing today, master's programs and PhD programs can both be excellent investments, but they're often very different investments. Master's programs are usually shorter and may lead to a faster career advancement, but they may require more out-of-pocket tuition, and more borrowing. PhD programs are often longer and may delay full-time earnings, but funded programs may provide tuition waivers, stipends, or even lower debt. Neither option is automatically better. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:53]: The right choice depends on your goals, your field, your finances, your borrowing history, your timeline, and your comfort with risk. Before you commit, request written funding detail, compare the net price, estimate your debt to income ratio, review career outcomes, ask about completion rates, consider opportunity cost, and be honest with yourself and with what you need from the degree. Graduate school can be a powerful step forward, but the goal is not simply to get admitted. The goal is to choose a program that you can complete, afford, and use to move confidently toward your future. That's all for today's episode of Victors in Grad School. Thanks for listening. Keep asking good questions, keep planning ahead, and Keep moving toward your future. The University of Michigan-Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:50]: Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time Thank you for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
What Part-Time Graduate Students Need to Understand About Federal Lending Changes
Are you considering pursuing graduate school on a part-time basis, or are you already balancing your studies with work, family, or other responsibilities? This week's episode of "Victors in Grad School," hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, delivers a can't-miss financial primer for anyone navigating the evolving world of graduate student loans and part-time enrollment. In this informative episode, Dr. Christopher Lewis tackles a subject that's often overlooked: how recent changes to federal student lending will impact part-time graduate students. With the flexibility that part-time programs offer—allowing students to maintain employment, care for loved ones, and juggle personal commitments—it's no wonder more learners are considering this path. But, as Dr. Christopher Lewis points out, the new lending rules require careful, proactive planning to ensure your academic goals remain within reach. Key Themes from the Episode: Loan Proration and Enrollment Intensity: Dr. Christopher Lewis clearly explains the concept of loan proration—the idea that if you're enrolled less than full-time, your federal student loan eligibility is adjusted downward, sometimes significantly. He stresses the importance of understanding your institution's definition of full-time, as it directly affects your financial aid. Strategic Financial Planning: Part-time study can still be possible, but Dr. Christopher Lewis encourages listeners to ask detailed questions about how their course load will affect both their tuition bills and their borrowing eligibility. Gaps in funding might need to be filled with personal savings, employer tuition assistance, scholarships, or payment plans. Employer Tuition Assistance & Program Comparison: One actionable tip is to leverage employer-sponsored tuition reimbursement, which can contribute significantly to covering costs over multiple years. He also urges students to compare the long-term costs and benefits of part-time versus full-time enrollment, including time-to-degree and access to career advancements. Proactive Questioning & Planning: Dr. Christopher Lewis empowers students to treat their course schedule as a key part of their financial plan and not just an academic decision. By planning ahead and understanding all policies, students can minimize surprises and maximize their investment in education. If you're a current or prospective part-time graduate student—or support someone who is—this episode is packed with practical advice and critical insights. Don't miss out on this expert financial guidance tailored for part-time learners. Tune in to the full conversation on "Victors in Grad School" today, and set yourself up for success in your grad school journey! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:02]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And this week, I'm going to be talking to you again, and we're going to be talking more about finances, about things that are going to be important as you're making those decisions for your future. Today, we're going to be continuing to talk about the things that you should know and that you should focus on, that you should focus on, especially if you are part of a group of graduate students who are incredibly common, incredibly motivated, and sometimes overlooked in conversations about graduate school financing. So today we're going to be talking specifically about being a part-time graduate student. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:54]: For many students, part-time graduate study is not just a preference, it's what makes graduate school possible. Part-time enrollment allows students to keep working, care for children or family members, maintain health insurance through an employer, manage financial responsibilities, and pursue a degree without stepping away completely from their personal or professional lives. For working professionals, especially part-time graduate programs can be practical and powerful paths forward. But upcoming changes— But the new changes in federal student lending could affect how you as a part-time student finance your degree? Because you see that under the new federal lending rules, students who enroll less than full-time are going to have to have their annual federal loan eligibility reduced based on their enrollment level. So in plain language, what does that mean? It means that if you take fewer courses, that may also mean that you're going to be able to borrow less in federal loans. So that doesn't mean that part-time graduate school is no longer possible. It absolutely can be. But it does mean that for those students that are going to go part-time, you need to plan carefully. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:09]: You have to ask direct questions and understand how your course load affects your financial aid. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about loan pro— what loan proration means, how enrollment intensity works, why this matters, for part-time students and what strategies that part-time students can use to make part-time graduate education even more affordable. So let's jump in. So more and more students today are starting to look at graduate school through a part-time lens. Part-time graduate education plays an important part in expanding access to advanced degrees. Not every student can work full— can stop working and attend school full-time. Not every student can relocate, take on unpaid internships, or pause family responsibilities. Many graduate students are already professionals. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:00]: They may be teachers, nurses, engineers, social workers, managers, public servants, nonprofit leaders, parents, caregivers, veterans, entrepreneurs. The list goes on and on. For these students, part-time enrollment can be the bridge between where they are now and where they want to go next. Part-time graduate program can allow students to apply what they are learning immediately into the workplace. It can reduce the need to leave a job. It can help students continue earning income while pursuing a credential. And it can also make graduate education feel more manageable when life is already full. And let's be honest, for many graduate students, life is very full. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:41]: But part-time enrollment also changes the financial picture. Students may take longer to finish. They may pay fees, across many semesters. They may have different eligibility for scholarships, assistantships, or loans. And under the new federal lending rules, they now are going to have reduced federal loan eligibility if they're enrolled less than full-time. So part-time study can be a smart choice, but it needs to be a well-planned choice. So the key change that we're talking about right now is called loan proration. Under the new federal lending environment, annual federal loan limits for students enrolled less than full-time must be prorated based on the student's enrollment level related to the institution's definition of full-time enrollment. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:29]: Now, that's a lot of language, so let's break it down. Proration basically means that your loan eligibility is adjusted proportionally. If you're enrolled at 100% of a full-time course load, you may be eligible for the full annual loan amount available under the rules of your program. But if you're enrolled at 50% of the full-time course load, your annual federal loan eligibility may be reduced to 50% of the annual loan limit. So for example, if a program defines full-time enrollment as 24 credit hours per year and a student enrolls in 12 credit hours per year, that student is enrolled at 50% intensity. Under loan proration, that student may be eligible for only 50% of the annual federal loan limit. Now, this matters because many students choose part-time enrollment specifically to make graduate school more manageable. But if a loan eligibility decreases along with enrollment, students may find that federal loans no longer cover the full cost of tuition and fees, even if they're taking fewer classes. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:35]: That's the key point here. A lower course load may reduce your bill, but it may also reduce your borrowing eligibility. And as a student, you need to look at both sides of that equation. So I mentioned enrollment intensity. To better understand loan proration, students need to also understand enrollment intensity. Enrollment intensity refers to the number of credit hours a student takes during an academic term or an academic year compared with the number of credits the institution considers full-time. In many programs, enrollment categories look something like full-time, meaning 12 or more credit hours per semester, whereas half-time means 6 to 11 credit hours per semester. Less than half-time may mean fewer than 6 credit hours per semester. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:25]: But graduate programs can vary. Some graduate programs define full-time status differently. Some use academic year totals. Some use clinical hours, internship hours, practicum hours, or even research credits. Some graduate programs have very specific rules based on accreditation, program structure, or even institutional policy. That means that students cannot guess. If you're considering part-time enrollment, you need to ask your program and financial aid offices directly. You need to ask them, how does this program define full-time enrollment? How many credits are considered half-time? How many credits will I take each semester or academic year? What will my enrollment intensity be? How will my enrollment intensity affect my federal loan eligibility? And will reducing my course load create a funding gap? These questions are especially important for students who are planning around work schedules, family responsibilities, employer tuition reimbursement, or personal budgets. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:26]: The more precisely that you understand your enrollment intensity, the more accurately you can plan. So as you think about all of this, why does this matter? Well, at first glance, part-time enrollment may seem less expensive, and in some ways it is. If you take fewer classes in a semester, your tuition bill for that semester may be lower. That can help students— that can help you to manage your cash flow, keep working, or avoid taking on too much at once. But the financial picture is more complicated. If your federal loan eligibility is prorated based on your enrollment intensity, then taking fewer credits may also reduce the amount that you can borrow. This may create an ultimate gap between the costs of your program and the available federal aid. And that gap might have to be covered by your current income, savings, employer tuition assistance, scholarships, institutional grants, payment plans, family support, or even private loans. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:27]: And the thing to keep in mind here is that each of those options have different implications. So as a part-time student, you have to think about the total time to degree. The part— a part-time program may have— may take 3, 4, or even more years to complete depending on the program. So additional semesters may mean additional fees, continued transportation costs, continued technology costs, and a longer period before you realize the career benefits of the degree. Again, that does not mean that part-time enrollment is a bad choice, For many students, it's exactly the right choice, but it does mean that you need to understand the full cost of the path that you are choosing, not just the cost of one semester. So one of the most important strategies that you as a part-time student should explore is employer tuition assistance. If you're working while pursuing a graduate degree, your employer may offer tuition reimbursement, tuition assistance, professional development funds, or educational benefits. And under Section 127 of the federal tax law, employers may provide up to $5,250 each year in tax-free educational assistance to eligible employees. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:42]: That can make a meaningful difference, especially for part-time students spreading a degree across multiple years. So if you are employed, you need to start by asking your human resources office or supervisor if your organization offers. tuition reimbursement or tuition assistance and whether or not you are eligible for the benefit. By understanding that and understanding how that benefit works and how it is paid out and whether or not there are other, I'm going to say, strings attached to the use of the funds, all of those things are going to be things that you're going to need to look into. And it's definitely worth asking, even if you think that you've already— you already know the answer. Employer policies change and some organizations have benefits that employers simply do not even know about. And here's the important— here is an important planning point. If your employer offers that $5,250 per year that I mentioned, and your program is 3 years long, that could represent more than $15,000 of support over the course of the degree. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:46]: That's real money, very real, the kind of real money that demonstrates— that deserves a spreadsheet and maybe even a celebratory coffee. Another strategy to consider is to compare part-time and full-time enrollment options. Sometimes students assume that part-time is automatically more affordable because the semester bill is lower, but depending on loan eligibility, scholarships, assistantships, fees, time to degree, and career outcomes, that may not always be true. In some cases, a faster full-time program may be financially better because it allows you to complete the degree sooner, and access career advancement or higher earnings earlier. In other cases, part-time enrollment may be the better option because it allows you to keep earning income, maintaining benefits, and use employer tuition assistance. The point is not that one path is always better. The point is that as a student, you have to be able to compare the options. So in this type of scenario, you need to ask your program and better understand What the total cost of completing the degree is going to be. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:56]: And what is the total cost in completing it as a part-time student? What is the total cost of completing it as a full-time student? And how long do full-time students take to complete? How long do part-time students take to complete? Are there assistantships or scholarships that are offered to part-time students versus full-time students? All of these different questions are going to help you to make a better decision that can be built off of solid information and not assumptions. A 3rd strategy to consider is to look at tuition payment plans. If reduced loan eligibility creates a gap, a payment plan may allow you to spread your balance over several months instead of paying one large amount at the beginning of a term. This can be especially helpful for working students who plan to use income Or employer reimbursement to cover part of the cost. A payment plan does not— doesn't reduce the cost of the degree, but it can make— it can allow for you to make payments more manageable and may reduce the need to borrow. So if you go and you ask the Student Accounts Office more about payment plans that are available, you can find out more about what they look like, how many payments are allowed over a semester, are there enrollment fees, are there service charges or interest fees? Do you take advantage of that? Can they be used alongside with financial aid? Can employer reimbursement be coordinated with a payment schedule? For students that are trying to avoid private loans, a payment plan can sometimes be an important piece of the puzzle. A 4th idea would be if you're still an undergraduate student and you're already thinking about graduate school, you should be thinking about what could come next. You could ask your institution whether your institution offers accelerated master's degree programs, combined bachelor's or master's programs or opportunities to count undergraduate coursework toward graduate credit. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:53]: Those type of pathways can sometimes reduce the number of credits needed for not only the bachelor's degree, but also lower the number of credits that you need for a master's degree. You know, for example, some programs allow qualified undergraduates to begin graduate coursework during their senior year, and others allow certain courses to count both toward a bachelor's and a master's degree. And if available, these options can shorten the path to a graduate credential. So at your institution, you need to ask the right questions. You need to ask, are accelerated graduate pathways available? What programs are they available in? Are undergraduate courses counted toward graduate degrees? Can you start those graduate courses in your undergraduate degree? And I always encourage students to plan early and to ask those questions upfront. So if you're early on in a bachelor's degree, Ask those questions now and find out what you need to be taking to prepare yourself to be able to be eligible just for that. A final strategy to consider is that if you are planning to be a part-time student, you may want to think about adjusting your course load from term to term because ultimately life happens. Work demands increase, family responsibilities shift, health needs arise. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:08]: Sometimes reducing your course load is the right decision. But under loan proration rules, reducing your course load may also reduce your loan eligibility. And that means course load changes should be treated as financial decisions as well as academic decisions. Before dropping from full-time to part-time or half-time to less than half-time, you really need to ask yourself some good questions, such as, how will this decision affect my federal loan eligibility? Will I still qualify for institutional aid? Will it affect scholarships, fellowships, or assistantships? Will it change my health insurance eligibility? Will it affect my housing, my visa status, or other benefits? Will it extend my time to degree? Will it increase my total cost? And can I cover any new funding gap that may occur because of this? Sometimes reducing credits is necessary, but it should only be done with a full understanding of the consequences. In the end, you need to think about it this way: course load It's not just an academic schedule, it's part of your financial plan. So in the end, part-time graduate education still remains to be an important and valuable pathway. For working adults, caregivers, and students balancing multiple responsibilities, part-time enrollment can make an advanced degree possible. But under the new federal lending rules, you need to understand how enrollment intensity affects your loan eligibility. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:33]: Taking fewer credits may lower your immediate tuition bill, but it may also reduce the federal loans available to you. And that means planning early is essential. Before enrolling in any program, make sure that you understand your program's definition of full-time status, calculate your enrollment intensity, estimate your federal loan eligibility, identify any funding gaps, and then explore employer benefits, scholarships, payment plans, accelerated options, and other sources of support. Graduate school is a major investment, but with the right information, part-time students can make that investment wisely. And remember, asking financial questions is not a sign that you're unsure. It's a sign that you're prepared. That's all for today's episode of Victors in Grad School. Thanks for listening. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:21]: Keep asking good questions, keep planning ahead, and keep moving toward your goals. The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If You are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a Victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Navigating Graduate School Finances After July 1, 2026
Are you considering graduate school in the coming years? If so, this week's episode of Victors in Grad School unpacks one of the most important (but often overlooked) aspects of your journey: how to plan, budget, and best position yourself financially amidst sweeping federal student lending changes that took effect after July 1, 2026. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, this episode is a must-listen for anyone serious about making smart financial choices on the path toward an advanced degree. Dr. Christopher Lewis wastes no time highlighting why recent changes to federal lending policies should be front and center for every prospective grad student. He explains that, as of July 1, 2026, federal student loan programs for graduate and professional students have undergone major reforms affecting how much you can borrow, which loan options are available, and how to prepare for the true cost of your education. Gone is the safety net of the Graduate PLUS loan program—once a bridge for many students needing to close the gap between standard loans and sky-high tuition. Now, a new landscape of annual, aggregate, and lifetime borrowing caps means that meticulous financial planning is non-negotiable (03:41; 06:26). But it's not just about losing borrowing options. Dr. Christopher Lewis breaks down critical distinctions between graduate and professional degree programs, each with different borrowing limits, and cautions that these definitions may evolve as legal battles play out (08:53). He encourages listeners to go beyond the "sticker price" and get a true net cost projection that includes tuition, supplies, housing, licensure fees, and the program's average completion time (09:45; 10:31). The episode offers actionable tips: talk to your financial aid office, request full cost breakdowns, and explore institutional scholarships, assistantships, or employer tuition benefits before turning to private loans. If you do have to go the private route, Dr. Christopher Lewis provides a checklist of essential questions to ask lenders and emphasizes the risks compared to federal loans (14:35). The main message? Financial preparedness is now more crucial than ever for graduate school success. Dr. Christopher Lewis invites you to be proactive, ask tough questions, and keep revisiting your plan as circumstances change (18:42). Graduate education is still a powerful investment—but you must approach it with eyes wide open and the right resources. Ready to dive deeper and get the confidence you need to make informed financial decisions about grad school? Tune in to this timely episode of Victors in Grad School—your future self will thank you! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:02]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School, where every week we have a great opportunity to be able to work together on helping you to find success in that journey that you're on toward graduate school yourself. And today, you and I are going to talk. We're going to delve a little bit more into some of the things that can help you, especially as it relates to some of the major federal student lending changes that have recently come about that may impact your ability to get financial aid now that we're past July 1st, 2026. Now, I know that the federal lending policy may not sound like the most exciting topic at first. It's not exactly the kind of thing people bring up at dinner parties. But if you are thinking about graduate school, this really matters. It matters because graduate education is a major investment. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:10]: It can help you advance in your career, increase your earning potential, enter a licensed profession, shift into a new field, or pursue work that is— intellectually and personally meaningful to you, but it also requires planning. And you see, starting on July 1st, 2026, federal student loan policies for graduate and professional students have substantially changed in ways that will impact your ability to borrow, budget, and to decide on ultimately which program that you're going to want to attend. So today what we're going to be doing is talking about what has changed, why it matters, and what you need to be thinking about to be able to prepare and to think differently about your education. Now, as always, this episode is meant to help you to ask better questions and inform decisions. For your own individual financial situation, though, I highly, highly encourage you that you need to be talking to your own university's financial aid office. your loan servicer, and official federal student aid resources. So with that being said, let's get started. So why does this matter? Why does it matter and why should you stay up to date? Well, as of July 1st, 2026, federal student aid policies related to graduate borrowing shifted significantly. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:32]: These changes ultimately are affecting how much you can borrow, whether certain loan programs are available, And how you have to plan for the full cost of your education. That means that as a prospective graduate student, you need to ask more than, can I get admitted? You also have to ask, can you afford to complete the program? And that's an important distinction. Getting admitted to graduate school is exciting and it should be celebrated, but admission alone does not answer the financial questions. Students need to understand the total cost of attendance, Available funding, federal loan eligibility, potential gaps in that eligibility or gaps in the funding that's available to you, the repayment options that are available to you, and likely career outcomes as well. And this is especially true in a changing lending environment. If you're considering graduate school for 2026 or beyond, you have to make sure that you are using current information because policies can change, institution costs can change, loan limits can change, and repayment rules can change. So one of the first pieces of advice that I'd give you, it's simple. Stay up to date. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:41]: You need to visit trusted resources. You need to talk with your financial aid professionals at your institutions. You need to ask questions of the programs directly and revisit your financial plan as you identify and learn new information. Because a graduate degree can still be a strong investment, but the investment needs to be understood clearly. So one of the major things that changed after July 1st, 2026, was the elimination of Graduate PLUS loans. For the past 20 years, the Graduate PLUS loan program, often called Grad PLUS, has been an important federal loan option for graduate and professional students. Grad PLUS loans allowed eligible students to borrow up to the full cost of attendance minus other financial aid received. For many students, that flexibility helped cover gaps between standard federal unsubsidized loans and the actual cost of graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:41]: Grad PLUS loans also came with federal loan features, including fixed interest rates, income-driven repayment eligibility, deferment options, and potential eligibility for public service loan forgiveness, depending on employment and repayment plan. For students in high-cost graduate or professional programs, Grad PLUS was often the bridge between available federal unsubsidized loans and the full cost of completing the degree. But beginning July 1st, 2026, that bridge is no longer available to new borrowers. So that is a significant change because without Grad PLUS, you may need to rely more heavily on institutional aid, assistantships, fellowships, employer tuition benefits, savings, income from work, payment plans, Or even private loans. And not all of those options are equally available to you. This doesn't mean that graduate school is out of reach, but it does mean that you're going to need to understand your financial plan earlier and in more detail. And you need to do that before you commit to a program. So before committing to a program, you need to be able to ask some additional questions like, will federal loans cover the cost of the program? And if not, What kind of options are available to you? Does your program offer scholarships, fellowships, or assistantships? Do you have employer tuition support that could be available to you, or, or are you going to need private loans? And if you do need private loans, what are the risks and the repayment terms that you need to understand? The end of Grad PLUS Loans means that you cannot assume that federal borrowing will automatically cover the cost of attendance. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:26]: Also, after July 1st, 2026, New borrowing limits have also been put in place. These limits include annual borrowing limits, aggregate limits, and an overall federal lifetime cap. For graduate students in nonprofessional degree programs, the annual federal loan limit will now be $20,500 per year with an aggregate graduate borrowing limit of $100,000. And if you are a student in a professional degree program, the annual limit is expected to be $50,000 a year with an aggregate limit of $200,000. There's also an overall federal lifetime borrowing cap of $257,500, which includes federal loans borrowed across undergraduate, graduate, and professional study. That lifetime cap is especially important. Why? Because graduate students don't start from zero if they already borrowed as undergraduates. If you borrowed federal loans in your bachelor's degree, those loans may now count toward your lifetime federal borrowing limit. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:32]: That means that if you have less remaining federal eligibility for graduate school, that you— that means that you may have less remaining federal eligibility for graduate school than you initially expected. So before enrolling in graduate programs, you need to know what your current federal loan balance is and understand how much eligibility that you still have available to you. Another important piece of the new borrowing structure is the distinction between graduate program— graduate degree programs and professional degree programs. This matters because students in professional degree programs may qualify for higher federal borrowing limits. With the new structure, students in eligible professional degree programs, as I mentioned, may have access to the higher annual limit of $50,000 a year, or that $200,000 Aggregate. By contrast, the other graduate students in nonprofessional programs are limited to the $20,500 per year and $100,000 in aggregate. According to the guidance provided, professional degree programs may include fields such as law, medicine, osteopathic medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, optometry, podiatry, pharmacy, chiropractic, theology, and clinical psychology. But here's the thing. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:53]: Even since July 1st, 2026, there have been lawsuits that have gone to the courts that may change the definition of what a professional program is. So as I said earlier about staying up to date, you're going to have to continue to ask questions and to look further into whether your program is truly considered a professional program or a nonprofessional program as relates to your specific institution. And the only way to do that is to have a conversation with your financial aid office. So while this is still in flux, it is very important to know because depending on what type of program that you're going into and whether it is considered a professional or nonprofessional degree will ultimately impact the amount of money that you can take out every year. Another change is that in the new borrowing environment, you need full cost projections before you enroll. With all of these changes that have been put into place, you need to know the full cost of the program that you're interested in before you enroll. You need to know more than just the tuition for your first semester, more than just the tuition for your first year, or you instead need to know the full projected cost of completing The degree, and that includes your tuition, your fees, books, supplies, housing, food, transportation, health insurance, clinical and internship expenses, licensure costs, and any other program-specific costs that might be out there. But this also includes time. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:31]: How much time does it typically take to finish a degree? Because if a program is listed as a 2-year degree, but students usually take longer than that, that's going to impact you financially. An extra semester, or a year can mean additional tuition fees, living expenses, etc. So before enrolling, you need to ask your institutions to provide you with that information. You need to get that better, fuller picture of the full cost projection for the program so that you can make informed decisions about ultimately what you're going to do in the end about this program and whether it's the right program for you. You see, one of the things that you might find is that a program that looks expensive upfront may cost more if it takes longer to complete, and a program with higher tuition may be more affordable if it offers strong institutional aid, a shorter timeline, or better career outcomes. The number you want is not just sticker price. The number you want is the net cost over the full program. Another thing that you really need to be thinking about in this new type of environment is that you need to be able to borrow only what you need. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:48]: That may sound obvious, but it becomes even more important when annual and lifetime loan limits apply. Under stricter borrowing limits, every dollar matters. If you borrow more than necessary in one year, That borrowed amount may reduce the federal loan eligibility you have available later to you, even if you pay some of it back. So that means that you need to think strategically before accepting the full amount of the loan that's being offered to you. You've got to be able to ask yourself, do you really need all of this money? Can you reduce your expenses? Can you cover some costs through Income, savings, or employer support? Are there scholarships or assistantships that you might not have explored? And could a payment plan help you avoid borrowing as much upfront? All of these type of questions are going to help you to be able to make smart decisions because the goal is to borrow enough to support your success, but not more than you need. As you look at your program, you may find that federal loans don't cover the full cost of your program. And if that happens, don't immediately jump to the private private loans without exploring other options. First, start with your financial aid office. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:05]: You want to ask whether there are institutional scholarships, emergency grants, graduate assistantships, fellowships, tuition discounts, payment plans, or other forms of support that could be offered to you as an individual. You can talk to the program as well and ask whether students commonly work part-time, whether there are paid internships that are available, whether assistantships are open to students in your degree. And whether there are department-level awards. You can also talk to your employer if you're working, because some employers do offer tuition opportunities or educational benefits that you might not be aware of. You can ask whether tuition reimbursement or tuition assistance through your employer is available, and because in some cases those benefits are available and they may even be tax-free. Up to a certain amount. Ultimately, with all of this, there's no single right answer. The point is to evaluate your options before committing to debt. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:06]: I also want to make sure that you think about private loans. Private loans may be part of the financing, uh, may be part of the financing plan for some of you. Private loans may be part of the financing plan that you need to consider, but they should be. And if you are going to do that, you need to make sure that you're approaching them carefully. Private loans are not the same as federal loans. May have variable interest rates. They could require a credit check. They could require a cosigner. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:35]: They may have fewer repayment protections. Because they may have fewer repayment protections, they may not offer income-driven repayment, and they're generally not eligible for public service loan forgiveness. So before taking out a private loan, you need to make sure that you're asking the lender good questions. About what, what is the interest rate? Is it fixed? Is it variable? If they're offering you a current rate, if and when does that potentially change? Are there origination fees? When does repayment begin? Does the interest accrue, or does the interest accrue while you're enrolled? Is there a cosigner required? Are there penalties for early repayment? What happens if you lose it? What happens if you lose your job or face financial difficulty? These are all really important questions to ask. And if you're considering private loans, you need to make sure that you're comparing lenders carefully and make sure that you understand the repayment terms before signing. So what does all this mean when you're choosing a graduate program? It means affordability and outcomes need to be part of the decision from the beginning. Of course, you should still consider academic quality, faculty expertise, curriculum, location, format, accreditation. Research opportunities, clinical training, and professional fit. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:54]: Those things matter. But you should also ask, what is the total cost of completing this degree? How much aid is available? Is funding guaranteed? Will federal loans cover the full cost? And if not, what is the gap? Are you going to need a private loan? And how much debt do graduates in this program typically have? What are the typical starting salaries? What percentage of graduates work in their intended field? How long does it take for graduates to repay their loans? And how does this program help students achieve career outcomes? A strong program should be willing to help you understand those questions. If you can't get clear answers, that's information too. Graduate school is not only about whether a program wants you, it's also about the program. It's also whether the program is a good fit for your goals, your finances, And your future. So if you're considering graduate school after July 1st, 2026, let me give you a couple of things to consider. First, review your current federal loan balance. Know how much you've borrowed as an undergraduate and how much lifetime eligibility you may still have remaining. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:04]: Second, ask each program for a full cost projection. Don't rely on tuition. Ask for the total estimated cost to complete the degree. Third, confirm your program classification. Find out whether the program is considered a graduate degree program or a professional degree program for federal loan purposes. Fourth, ask about funding. Find out about scholarships, fellowships, assistantships, tuition waivers, employer partnerships, and payment plans that can all impact the amount that you have to pay. Fifth, estimate your borrowing need. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:42]: You need to look at how much you may need to be able to borrow each year and in total. Sixth, evaluate repayment. Look at the salary data and the loan repayment estimates to understand what life after graduation may look like financially. Seventh, be cautious with private loans because if private loans are necessary, you need to compare terms carefully and understand what protections you do or don't have. And finally, you need to stay informed because federal lending rules and institutional policies can be complex and constantly changing. Ultimately, graduate school can still be a powerful and worthwhile investment. I am the biggest advocate for that and biggest advocate for you to continue that education to move toward your goals. Now that we have passed July 1st, 2026, you do need to approach graduate financing with even more care. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:42]: The elimination of Grad PLUS loans, new annual and aggregate borrowing limits, and the federal lifetime loan cap all make early financial planning essential. The good news is that you don't have to navigate this alone. As you're looking at schools, as you're deciding on the school to go to, talk to financial aid officers, talk to your graduate program staff, talk to admission representatives, Talk to current students and alumni and ask for data, ask for projections, and ask for written funding details. And remember, asking financial questions does not make you difficult. It makes you prepared. The goal is not simply to enroll in graduate school. The goal is to choose a program that you can complete, afford, and use to move confidently toward your professional and personal goals. That's all for today's episode of Victors in Grad School. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:36]: Thanks for listening. And keep asking good questions, keep planning ahead, and moving toward the future. The University of Michigan-Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/grad. graduate programs to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a Victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:18]: If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Financial Questions to Ask Before Graduate School
Embarking on the journey to graduate school is a significant milestone—one that promises career advancement, personal growth, and deeper expertise. But as Dr. Christopher Lewis shares in this insightful episode of "Victors in Grad School," understanding the financial commitment before you enroll is crucial to making informed and confident decisions about your education. This episode shifts gears from the usual guest interviews, with Dr. Christopher Lewis taking center stage to break down the most important financial questions every prospective graduate student should ask. If you've been wondering how to budget for grad school, decode funding offers, or anticipate your future financial outcomes, this is the episode for you. Looking Beyond Tuition Too often, students focus solely on tuition, missing the full picture of graduate school's cost. Dr. Christopher Lewis highlights that it's essential to account for fees, housing, transportation, books, health insurance, professional licensing, and general living expenses. He encourages listeners to ask schools whether tuition is fixed or likely to increase during the program, and to understand how long students typically take to graduate—a longer timeline means greater costs. Understanding Funding and Borrowing Securing funding can be complex. Scholarships, fellowships, assistantships, tuition waivers, and loans all play roles in financing your education. Dr. Christopher Lewis stresses the need to clarify what funding is available, if it's guaranteed or competitive, and what exactly it covers. For those considering loans, he explains the importance of understanding federal versus private loan options, repayment obligations, and the impact on your future finances. Focusing on Outcomes Cost is only one piece of the puzzle. Dr. Christopher Lewis urges prospective students to explore program completion rates, time to graduate, and career outcomes for alumni. Ask about job placement percentages, typical earnings, and how graduates' salaries compare to their levels of debt. Your goal, as Dr. Christopher Lewis puts it, is not just to enter graduate school—but to afford it, complete it, and use your degree to move confidently toward your future goals. Tune In to Empower Your Decision If you're preparing for the leap into graduate school, this episode is packed with real-world wisdom and actionable advice. Listen now to empower your decision-making process and set yourself up for success in both your academic and financial life! Ready to dig deeper? Listen to the full episode of "Victors in Grad School" with Dr. Christopher Lewis and get the guidance you need for your grad school journey. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:02]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs for the University of Michigan Flint. And I'm really excited that you're back again this week. You know, every week I love having conversations with you that are always designed to help you to make informed, confident, and successful decisions about graduate education. And today we're going to be doing something a little bit different. A lot of times I have guests on the show, and today I'm going to be talking with you about something that's really important and something that's sometimes a little bit intimidating as well, which really goes into some of the graduate school decision-making process and the financial realities behind that. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:54]: You know, graduate school can be a really powerful investment. It can help you advance in your career, enter a new field, deepen your expertise. Increase your earning potential, or pursue work that's personally meaningful. But graduate school is also a major financial commitment. And here's the key point I want to emphasize today. The best time to understand the financial side of graduate school is before you enroll, not after orientation, not after the first tuition bill, not after the first tuition bill arrives, not after you have already taken out loans. Before. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about some questions, questions that you should be asking before you commit to a program. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:38]: And these questions can help you better understand the full cost of attendance, the funding opportunities that are available, the borrowing that you might need to consider, and the outcomes that you can reasonably expect after graduation. So let's get to it. First and foremost, what I want to talk about today is as you are looking at your education, and you're looking at institutions, you've got to look beyond tuition. So often when students think about the cost of graduate school, tuition is usually the first number that comes to mind. And that makes sense. Tuition is often a very large expense. But tuition is not the whole picture. You see, before enrolling in a graduate program, you want to understand the full cost of attendance. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:24]: That includes Tuition, yes, but it might also include fees, housing, transportation, books, technology, health insurance, professional licensing costs, lab fees, internship expenses, and even general living costs. Depending on the program, some of these additional costs can be really significant. For example, a program may require specialized software, clinical equipment, travel, to internship sites, licensure exams, background checks, or even conference participation. And those costs may not always be obvious when you're first reviewing a program website. Another important question is whether tuition is fixed or whether it will increase. A program that seems affordable in year 1 may become more expensive in year 2 or 3 if tuition and fees continue to rise. That doesn't mean that the program is not worth it, But it does mean that you should know what to expect. You should also know— you should also ask how long students typically take to complete their degree. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:30]: If a program is advertised as a 2-year degree, but many students actually take 3 years to finish, that extra year can change the financial equation. It may mean more tuition, more fees, more living expenses, and more time before you can see the career benefits of the degree. So when you're talking with admissions representatives, program directors, or even financial aid staff, you should really consider asking some of these questions. First, what's the total cost of attendance for this program? Does the estimate include tuition, fees, books, housing, transportation, and health insurance? Are tuition rates fixed or can they increase every year? Are there program-specific fees, lab fees, clinical fees, or professional licensing expenses that are required? And how long do students in this program typically take to graduate? These might sound like basic questions, but they are truly foundational. They help you move from a vague sense of cost to a realistic financial plan. Once you have that understanding, you need to move to be able to understand funding before you commit. So let's talk about that. Let's talk about funding. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:40]: Funding can look very different from program to program. Some graduate programs receive scholarships or fellowships. Some graduate students receive scholarships or fellowships. Some receive teaching or research assistantships. Some receive tuition waivers. Some receive stipends, others rely on loans, savings, employer support, or a combination of all of these. The important thing is to ask specific questions about what funding is available and whether that funding is guaranteed. That's a big one. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:10]: A student may receive funding in their first year but not the second, or funding may be competitive each year, or a scholarship may cover tuition but not fees. Or an assistantship may provide a stipend but require a certain number of work hours each week. You want to understand exactly what is being offered. If you receive a funding package, ask what it covers. Does it cover tuition? Does it cover fees? Does it include health insurance? Does it provide a living stipend? Does it cover summer terms? And how long does the support last? You should ask what happens if the funding runs out before you complete the degree. That question may feel uncomfortable, but it is much better to ask it before enrolling than to discover later that you need to find additional funding unexpectedly. Some additional questions to consider include, is funding guaranteed or competitive each year? How can I obtain a teaching assistantship, research assistantship, fellowship, or scholarship? If funding is guaranteed, What exactly does it cover? Does funding cover summer enrollment or summer living expenses? And what academic progress or work requirements do you have to keep to be able to keep the funding? And what happens if funding ends before you finish the program? These questions will help you understand not only the amount of funding available, but also the conditions attached to it. Once you get questions to those questions, It really becomes important that you then make wise decisions in regards to the borrowing that you feel that you need to do, because you want to be smart about borrowing, because borrowing is a part of the graduate school financing plan. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:59]: And that doesn't automatically mean that graduate school is a bad investment. Many students borrow for graduate education and go on to be able to achieve strong personal and professional outcomes, but borrowing should be intentional. Before taking out any loans, you really need to understand how much you may need to borrow each year and what your total debt may look like after graduation. It's also important to understand whether your program's costs may exceed federal borrowing limits. If federal loans are not enough to cover your costs, you may need to explore institutional aid employer support, assistantships, payment plans, personal savings, or even private loans. And each of those options come with different implications. One of the most important questions that you need to be asking is, what might your monthly payment look like after graduation? You see, sometimes students focus on whether they can borrow enough to attend, but the bigger question is whether the debt that they're going to accrue will be manageable after they finish. By working with your financial aid office and having intentional conversations with them, you can get a better estimate on the projected borrowing and replacement and repayment options. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:21]: When you're thinking about borrowing, there's a couple of other things that you need to be thinking about. You see, federal loans often include borrower protections such as deferment, forbearance, income-driven repayment options, and potential eligibility for forgiveness programs such as the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, depending on your employment and your repayment plan. Private loans, on the other hand, have different terms. They could require a cosigner. They may have variable interest rates. They may offer fewer hardship protections, and they may not be eligible for federal forgiveness programs. So you do need to ask some smart questions when it comes to loans. Especially if you're thinking about taking out private loans. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:08]: If you're planning to do that, you need to ask some questions like, what's the interest rate? Is the rate fixed or variable? Are there fees with the loans? When does the repayment begin? Will interest accrue while you're enrolled? Do you need a cosigner? Are there penalties for early repayment? And what protections are available if you experience financial hardship? My goal here is not to scare anyone away from borrowing. The goal here is to make sure that you are informed and you're able to make smart choices based on this new knowledge. Ultimately, cost matters, funding matters, borrowing matters, but there is another important part of the equation, and that's whether you successfully complete the program. Because Graduate school is challenging. Students can— you may be balancing coursework, research, jobs, family responsibilities, internships, clinical placements, or even dealing with financial stress. And strong student support can make a big difference. So before enrolling, make sure you're asking your program about completion rates and the time to degree and what percentage of students in the programs graduate. How long do students typically take? I mentioned that before. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:28]: What percentage finish in the expected timeframe? And what factors commonly delay graduation? Knowing the answer to these questions are going to allow for you to be able to really make smart decisions when it comes to identifying the right program for you. Because if you expect to finish in 2 years, but actually take 3 or 4, that changes your total cost. It also may delay your career transition or a salary increase. So a strong program should be able to take should be able to talk to you about how it supports students from admission through graduation when it comes to this. I also told you that we talk a little bit about outcomes, and outcomes are really important. Graduate school is not just about earning a credential, it's also about what that credential helps you to do. That might mean entering a licensed profession, moving into leadership, changing fields, preparing for doctoral study. increasing your earning potential, or pursuing work that aligns with your values. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:35]: Whatever your goal is, you should ask whether the program has a track record of helping students get there. So ask your program about career pathways. What are graduates from the program doing? What percentage of graduates find jobs, find jobs within their field within 6 months or a year? Where did the graduates of the institution Also work. You should also ask about earnings. What are the typical starting salaries for graduates in their program? What do graduates typically earn 1, 5, or 10 years after graduation? And how do these salaries typically align and compare? How do these salaries compare to the amount that students typically borrow? What level of debt do graduates usually have when they finish? And Based on typical earnings and borrowing, how long might it take to repay— how long might it take to repay your student loans? You hear a lot of people talking about return on investment. You hear a lot of people talk about return on investment or ROI, and that is not only about salary. It can also include personal fulfillment, career mobility, professional networks, job stability, and long-term opportunity. But salary and debt still do matter because a graduate degree can deeply, can be deeply valuable, and it still requires careful financial planning. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:07]: The more you know about outcomes, the better you can evaluate whether a program aligns with your goals. So one thing that I want to stress to you today is that you shouldn't feel that You have to have all of this figured out right now. There are people whose jobs it is to help you understand the program and the finances. So you can talk to admissions staff or financial aid officers, program directors, faculty, current students, alumni. You know, each group can provide a different perspective. Admissions staff can help you understand requirements and timelines. Financial aid staff can explain Costs, loans, and aid options. Program staff can help explain assistantships, curriculum, and typical time to degree. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:53]: Current students can help you— can tell you— current students can tell you what the experience is really like. And alumni can help you understand the career outcomes and how the degree translated into professional opportunities. So getting down to brass tacks, there's some practical things that I hope that you'll be able to do today. So before you choose a graduate program, make sure that you understand 6 things. First, the full cost of attendance, not just tuition, but the complete cost of completing the degree. Second, the funding is available to you. Know whether it is guaranteed, Competitive, renewable, or conditional. Third, your borrowing needs. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:40]: Estimate how much you may borrow each year and think about your total child. Estimate how much you would borrow each year and what your total debt may be at graduation. Fourth is repayment. You need to understand what repayment options may be and what your monthly income could look like. And fifth, you need to understand what repayment options may be available and what your monthly payments could look like. Fifth, ask yourself about completion rates, time to degree, advising, mentoring, and academic support. Ultimately, you want to know where graduates go, what they earn, and how much the degree supports their goals. If you can answer all of those questions clearly, you'll be able to be in a much stronger position to make an informed decision. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:26]: So in closing today, graduate school can be an incredible opportunity. It can change your career, expand your thinking, and grow your network. And often it opens doors that you might not have imagined. But it's also a serious investment. And the strongest graduate school decisions are made with clear eyes and good intention. So before you enroll, ask the financial question. Ask about cost, ask about funding, and ask about borrowing. So before you enroll, ask the financial questions. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:58]: Ask about costs, about funding, about borrowing. Ask About completion. Ask about career outcomes. Don't be afraid to ask questions. You're not being difficult. You're being responsive. You're being responsible. And remember, the goal is not simply to get into graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:17]: The goal is to create— the goal is to choose a program that you can afford, complete it, and then use to move confidently toward the goals and the future That's it for today's Victors in Grad School. Thanks for listening. And as always, keep asking good questions, keep planning ahead, and keep moving forward. The University of Michigan-Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a Victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:15]: If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Bridging Medicine and AI: Zoiya Morell's Unconventional Grad School Journey
In a standout episode of the "Victors in Grad School" podcast, Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Zoiya Morell, a trailblazing University of Michigan Flint graduate who boldly charted a course from biology to artificial intelligence (AI) and is now pursuing her MD at Central Michigan University. This conversation not only chronicles Zoiya Morell's unique academic path but also offers invaluable guidance for anyone contemplating graduate studies or navigating career pivots. The episode is rich with themes of curiosity, courage, and the power of following your passion—even when it leads to uncharted territory. Zoiya Morell candidly shares how she noticed the rapid rise of AI in medicine during her undergraduate pre-med studies. Lacking a coding background didn't stop her; instead, she recognized a learning opportunity and jumped headfirst into a challenging master's program in AI. Her experience proves that you don't need to fit the mold to shape a meaningful and impactful career. A major highlight is Zoiya Morell's emphasis on embracing the unknown and the unexpected. She openly discusses facing setbacks, such as initially not being accepted into medical school, but demonstrates how taking a year to pursue her interest in AI not only made her a stronger applicant but also gave her skills that medicine increasingly needs. Her advice for grad school hopefuls is refreshingly honest: don't just tick boxes—find areas that truly excite you, because that passion will fuel your motivation and help you stand out. The conversation also addresses the ever-present challenge of imposter syndrome. Zoiya Morell reveals how she overcame doubts by focusing on progress, experimenting fearlessly, and realizing that even experts are often still figuring things out—especially in fast-evolving fields like AI. Another core theme is the significance of building relationships. From creating a thriving AI interest group to forging research collaborations that bridge medicine and technology, Zoiya Morell demonstrates how supportive connections with peers and professors can open doors and enrich your graduate journey. Throughout the episode, listeners gain practical tips on time management, self-care, and leveraging unique skills. If you're curious about how to blend seemingly disparate fields, overcome obstacles, or make the most of graduate school, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in to hear an authentic story of resilience and innovation, and discover how you can carve your own extraordinary path in graduate education. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:02]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week, we have a great opportunity to be able to work together as you are planning your own journey to graduate education. And I call it a journey because it truly is a journey. Every person that is thinking about graduate school goes through a personal journey of reflection, of exploration, of just a deep dive into who they are and who they want to be. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:47]: And as you go through that, there are things that you can do, things that you can do right now to start to prepare yourself to have success in this journey, whether you're at the very beginning, just starting to think about this, whether you've already applied and maybe gotten accepted to a graduate program, maybe you're even in a graduate program right now. No matter where you are, there are things that you can do to be able to find that success. And that's why this show exists. Every week, I love being able to talk to different people with different experiences and share them with you. All of the people that have been on this show in the past and in the future, have gone to graduate school or are going through graduate school and are sharing their own journey with you. And you can learn from that journey that they've been on. Why? Why? Because they've made mistakes, they've done things right, and they've been able to figure things out along the way, things that might be able to help you, things you can add to your own toolbox and be able to push you in the right direction. Today we got another great guest. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:51]: Zoya Morel is with us today, and Zoya is a graduate of the University of Michigan Flint. She did both a bachelor's and a master's degree at the University of Michigan Flint, and we'll talk about that journey. But now she's actually a current doctor of medicine student at Central Michigan University, so we'll talk about that as well. I'm really excited to have her here, to be able to have her tell more about her own experience. Zoya, thanks so much for being here today. Zoiya Morell [00:02:21]: Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:22]: I am really excited to be able to have you here and to learn a little bit more about your own journey. And I always start these opportunities with an opportunity to turn the clock back in time. I said you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Flint. While you were here as an undergraduate student, you were doing a biology degree in pre-med and focusing on that. And at some point, at some point you said to yourself, I'm not done. I'm not done. I want to keep going. And one of the interesting parts is that you chose a field that I would not have expected. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:58]: And I want you to talk a little bit about this. So bring me back to that point where you said to yourself, I'm not done. I want to keep going. What was going through your head? Zoiya Morell [00:03:05]: I actually get this question a lot, and it sounds kind of weird. Like, how did I go from biology, no computer background, to, oh, I'm going to get a master's degree in AI? Which huge learning curve, by the way, jumping into it. I did not have a coding background. I knew nothing. So a lot of people wonder what made you make that jump? And they seem unconnected, but they're not. So for one, while I was in the biology program, I kept noticing AI come up as this is what doctors are going to be using. This is how we're doing research. It was everywhere. Zoiya Morell [00:03:38]: And anyone who knows me knows I hate not understanding. understanding something and I kept seeing AI come up and be like, oh, why don't I understand this yet? Why is it everywhere? So when I, for my thesis, I went to the Rogel Cancer Center for a symposium and I asked every single professor there, hey, how are you using AI in medicine today? And almost every single one of them said, I know we're using it. I don't know why or how. I was like, okay, we need to investigate this more. I was applying to med schools and I only applied to a handful. It's really expensive, so I just did the ones in Michigan cuz that's really where I wanted to be. And while I was doing that, I got one interview and didn't hear anything back from the handful I applied to. So I was thinking at this point, I'm probably not getting in. Zoiya Morell [00:04:54]: I have to change my strategy of how I'm gonna do things. What can I do in the meantime? At the same time, I found out I had earned a Scholarship from the Maize and Blue Award, which was amazing. That was kind of everything aligned because this was the first year they offered scholarships for that, and that would've given money towards the master's program and a GSRA position. I didn't know what that was, but I was like, hey, let's apply. So I decided I might be able to get a master's degree done in a year if I speedrun it. Then, hey, by some miracle, if I get accepted into med school, I'll get it done before med school. Yeah. Crazy idea there. Zoiya Morell [00:05:33]: It was, I didn't think both would happen at the same time. So I looked into the different master's programs and I had seen a lot of really scammy emails that were like, get a master's in public health. And I found they were really doing nothing for medicine. Everyone was getting them. No one was using them. So I looked into it more and I thought, what's the thing I see coming up everywhere that I'm just fascinated by? that I feel like I need to understand. And that was AI. If I had looked back to my 5-year-old self, I would've noticed these threads all along. Zoiya Morell [00:06:05]: I used to play a computer game called Creatures that was both based on biology where, you know, you raise these little creatures, you control their neurons and their hormones and all these things. So I was learning biology, but it was also one of the world's first neural networks. So it turns out I had been doing this stuff and fiddling with computers as well as biology for as long as I could remember. It was being able to bring them together that was like, oh, this is where I need to be. So I applied to the master's degree and got in. That was excellent. And I was really able to— and surprised by how much I was able to bring medicine into AI. It's like the 2 fields are meant for each other, but there's not a lot of people that can bridge that gap. Zoiya Morell [00:06:49]: So. That was my thought process there. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:52]: Now, you mentioned the fact that in that journey through your master's degree, you didn't come in with any background and you had to really jump in with both feet and learn a lot along the way. And I would say that most individuals thinking about a graduate degree probably feel like they have at least some understanding of what they're applying for. and what they're getting themselves into. And with the fact that you didn't, I'm sure that there was a lot of learning, but also a lot of transition that you had to go through to be able to prepare yourself for getting into and getting through that program with success. And you did very well in that program. You graduated with a 4.0. I mean, you, you did very well in that program. So talk to me a little bit about in that program alone, And jumping into a completely unfamiliar field, what did you have to do as you transitioned into that graduate program? And what did you have to do as you went through that program to maintain that success for yourself? Zoiya Morell [00:07:57]: So the first thing I would say is just stubbornness, because I needed a 4.0, or I convinced myself that I needed one for med school. I didn't know if that applied to the master's degree, but I was like, well, Let's find out. I better aim for a 4.0. A little bit of undue stress on myself there. But so that was my goal all along was I need to be good enough to maintain my grades in case it does apply to med school. But besides that stubbornness jumping in, I was terrified. I was like, I'm not good enough. I know nothing. Zoiya Morell [00:08:31]: Uh, so I did a lot of self-study. I did a lot of, um, like, hey, how are people programming? today versus, you know, 10 years ago. Where do I start? There was a lot of AI teaching me how to do something and then me trying to do it on my own later. I picked up a lot of little projects that ended up being really helpful later, like the ability to— like, hey, this used to take me forever to do a literature review. What if I can code a thing that just scrapes the web and does it for me? So I started challenging myself to I know I need to know this. How can I use it right now? And this really helped me even more than the classes, which helped a lot as well. Just forcing myself to use it as much as possible, kind of like learning a new language. So that helped a lot. Zoiya Morell [00:09:16]: And then the biggest thing was just, there was this massive shock for me when I went into classes and I realized I actually have an advantage by not knowing things because I know how much I don't know. A lot of students, data scientists come in and they figure they have a good foundation for this. But the thing is with AI is nobody knows anything. And once you realize that, you're in a good position to grow. So I was really shocked by how well I was able to do and figure things out because I didn't have that foundation of this is how things have to be done. I was able to kind of think outside the box. That meant I got things wrong a lot, but it also meant I was able to grow from that and not be stuck in how the way things had to be. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:00]: So you did a lot of preparation in your undergrad to go right to med school. Like you said, you went through that med school process at first, and it may not have gone the exact way you wanted, but you decided to pivot and go in a little bit different direction. You made the comment that a lot of people talk about public health or some other area. I know there's post-bac type programs and things that will talk to students about ways in which to kind of bridge between the undergrad and med school. Now that you've done what you did, and you went in a little bit different direction in that regard, and you look back on what you decided to do, if you were talking to other pre-med students as they are going through that process, whether it be through the MCATs or the application process, or they're thinking about, do I need to take a gap year? What kind of advice would you give to them? Zoiya Morell [00:10:51]: First of all, I'd say that med students are some of the most perfectionistic people out there. Don't get on Reddit for advice. You're just gonna see the people that scored perfect MCATs and have thousands of clinical hours and all these impossible goals. Don't check off a checkbox. Just figure out the things that excite you, that you wanna learn about, and pursue that. You could think, oh, it has nothing to do with medicine. It could be anything from fashion design to coding. And if that's what excites you as well as medicine, it's not an either/or, it's a both. Zoiya Morell [00:11:26]: And I promise you, there will be a field where you can bring those together. I've seen so many weird little things, like I'm using AI in medicine constantly. So that would be my advice is if you're looking for a secondary degree before medicine, Don't just go for the same 5 that every med student chooses, because I've talked to a lot of med students and they're not really using their degrees. I don't think it helped them get into med school. It would be good for a separate degree, but don't get it if it doesn't excite you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:57]: So you did decide to go to med school and you did finish that master's degree in 1 year, which is still a feat in itself and being able to get through that. But you went through that year of jumping into AI getting that master's degree, but at the same time going through again the application process. And you applied, like you said, to some programs within the state of Michigan. You ultimately decided to go to Central Michigan University. Talk to me about that search process for yourself and what ultimately made you decide that Central was the right program for you. Zoiya Morell [00:12:33]: So I actually only ever had 2 interviews, uh, with Oakland and with Central, uh, which is not surprising knowing the stats, but also, uh, application processes are kind of rigged. I had nearly perfect everything, like really high MCAT, high GPA. I had research, I had some clinical, but where I was struggling was I didn't have the super sparkly, oh, I went to Africa and, you know, built a hospital from scratch in a year. I didn't have those things that make me sound superhuman. So when I was applying, I was of course gonna get beaten out by the students that had all those things. So between Oakland and Central, when I interviewed, Oakland said, hey, we noticed you updated your application to say you're pursuing a master's degree in AI. Tell us about that. So I talked about that a little bit and they said, you think medicine is going to be replaced by AI, don't you? You think we're not needed anymore. Zoiya Morell [00:13:25]: You know, why do you even want to become a doctor? So negative about it. And I could tell from that instant, oh, I'm not going to get accepted here. They see my master's degree as a really bad thing. Then Central asked the same question. I was like, okay, here we go. This is gonna be the question that they kick me out now. And instead it was, how are you going to use AI in medicine? Hold up, wait, that's way different. And we were able to discuss it and I could tell that the faculty were just as excited as I was about how to bring ethics and humanity into AI and medicine. Zoiya Morell [00:13:56]: We were able to talk about that and to the point where now I'm doing med school research on AI in clinics. So it's really been cool just to see that perspective there. So between their interest in AI and also they shared my interest in rural health, I was like, yes, this is exactly the place for me. Like I could tell the instant I walked in on that interview. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:17]: And I mentioned the fact when you go into a program like AI that you had no background in to then Joining a medical program, again, different ways of learning, different expectations. You're being pushed in completely different directions. Yes, you're going to be able to pull from your biology background and your AI background to be able to help you in that journey. But there's still going to be another big transition that you have to go through. So talk to me about that transition of moving from— the master's and from the undergraduate institution that you came to know and really love to moving to a completely new academic environment and a new type of educational environment. What did you have to do as you transitioned into medical school to find that success and continue that success thus far? Zoiya Morell [00:15:09]: Yes, so I've never been good at rote memorization, which is kind of a shocker. Part of what I loved about the AI degree was it was all based on What can you dream up? What can you fiddle with and create? Whereas med school is completely the opposite. It's, here is a PowerPoint that's 90 slides long. You better have it memorized by the next hour. So that was a massive change in learning environment and types. I will say the first 2 or 3 weeks I was studying over 15 hours a day, I would say, barely sleeping, barely eating. I just Convinced I didn't have the time, and then I had to rework the way I learned because I was realizing I don't learn the same way other people do. Everyone's different. Zoiya Morell [00:15:53]: You know, everyone was saying use Anki flashcards. Turns out flashcards make me want to die inside, so I cannot use them. I had to figure out other ways, and that meant, for instance, how I learn now is I kind of tell myself stories and figure out ways to really understand the information rather than memorizing it. And once I can relate it to specific patients and specific events, then it's much easier for me to recall. We'll see how that applies when I get to the STEP exam. That'll be next year. But it was a different way to learn, and yet I was using a lot of the same tactics as in the AI degree, such as if I don't understand something, I am going to find resources and sit here until I do. A lot of that same stubbornness, and I even use AI a lot to teach myself things and create quizzes for me. Zoiya Morell [00:16:43]: It's not perfectly accurate. You have to do a lot of self-study and checking, but the two have definitely gone hand in hand and it's changed the way I study to the point where at least this past year I was able to have quite a bit of free time. In fact, more than the master's degree. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:56]: Now, one of the things that a lot of times people fight against when it comes to a master's degree, a doctorate degree, no matter what degree it is, is they inevitably run up against a point in time where they run up against that imposter syndrome where they feel that self-doubt during their graduate studies. Talk to me about how that impacted you and how did you handle it? Zoiya Morell [00:17:21]: Oh, that's been there this whole time. I will say I am like the worst test taker ever, so I chose a great degree for that. So even back to the ACT, like, my math score was abysmal because as soon as I see numbers on a page, they start to swim and I panic. So it, it came from a place of challenging myself and saying to myself, I don't want to be limited by what scares me and what I feel I'm not capable of. There was a lot of pushing through the things that scared me. I kind of had a motto of, pick the one thing that scares you today and do it, get it done. And that really helped was the, the little motivations like that. So that worked through bachelor's degree, of course. Zoiya Morell [00:18:03]: And then MCAT comes along and I'm like, oh no. Another hurdle I can't overcome. I was struggling with that too, cuz I'm just not a great test taker. And during the master's degree, that was probably when imposter syndrome reared its head the most because I didn't have the background in it. So when doing my research, I was like, there is no way I'm putting forward anything useful here. I must be making stuff up. And what actually convinced me and helped me through that was I read massive amounts of AI research, and the more I read, the more I realized none of us know what we're doing. That's kind of the whole point of AI, to the point where I was trying to replicate other people's experiments and finding out some of them were just flat out wrong. Zoiya Morell [00:18:48]: Like a lot of AI experiments, they feed it the test results, they otherwise rig the results. They don't report accuracy or some other measurement, or they don't even report things like cost or performance. So because of that, because we don't have a set definition of success in AI, I was like, okay, I don't need a set definition of success for myself either. That means I can just have fun with this experiment, do what I want. Sometimes that meant that I did things a little differently in class and I felt like, oh, I don't have that data science background that I need. But other times that was really helpful, was to be able to think a little differently. I will say imposter syndrome doesn't completely go away. Here in med school, I'm still like, maybe I should pick up Anki. Zoiya Morell [00:19:33]: I'm doing this all wrong. I need to pull out some flashcards. But just picking those little things that you're curious about learning and proving to yourself that you can do it every little step along the way is really valuable. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:45]: Definitely great advice. Now, as you think about that connection between AI and what you're doing right now, talk to me about how you're noticing the overlap as you're going through your medical program? I know you've been there one year, you're moving into your second year now, and talk to me about those connections. Zoiya Morell [00:20:03]: Yes, so students are using AI to learn, and they're also teaching AI medical things. Professors are using AI to create quizzes or PowerPoints sometimes. And also, the amount of research between AI and medicine is astounding. So it's actually really hard to do a literature review on the two because there's so, so much out there right now. And a lot of it is either medical people that don't understand AI and are trying to use it, or AI people that are trying to do something in medicine. So both of those are like the super impactful research right now, but the fields don't really understand each other and they have difficulties kind of bridging the gap and communicating between them. So as I have been reading a lot of this research, I'm finding out the AI people are getting the medical stuff wrong. The medical people are getting the AI stuff wrong. Zoiya Morell [00:20:56]: And what they really need is more research that is focused on ethics and understandability and repeatability in AI. So I'm seeing it pretty much everywhere from, an example would be like radiology is using it to pick which imaging should go first or to highlight details. You've got Ultrasound that's using it. You've got teachers using it. You've got pretty much everything I can think of is using AI to some extent. Even the study tools like UpToDate, for example, that's what doctors use when they're searching for what conditions a patient might have. It's an invaluable resource that now has its own AI that you can use to look for conditions. So it's absolutely everywhere. Zoiya Morell [00:21:39]: There's no escaping it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:40]: Now, as you go through a graduate program, not only is it important to be able to learn what you've got to learn, but it's also important to make connections and to build those relationships with not only your faculty but also your peers. Talk to me about the relationships that you were able to build either through your master's or now in your, in your doctorate degree, and how did you find that those relationships were especially impactful? Zoiya Morell [00:22:04]: So both my peers and my professors have all been amazing. I have made some of the best connections through the master's program. Kind of started during my first couple AI classes. I was like, hey, we're all interested in the same thing, and we are some of the first people to ever get a degree in AI. So because of that, I didn't wanna lose that connection. So I started a Discord server for anyone interested in AI, and every class I invited that class of students to join. It's gotten pretty big. And then also I've formed great relationships with several of my professors as well. Zoiya Morell [00:22:36]: We still chat all the time. There's been some continued research there. I'm finally getting one of my research articles published just recently. I found out about that. It's been a year-long process through med school. There was some rough times when they needed a revision, but also I had an exam and I had to balance that. But then in med school, you're already a very tight-knit group cuz it kind of feels like you're all going to war and you're in this together. And what has happened in this past semester? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:03]: Yeah. Zoiya Morell [00:23:03]: is I've formed a little research group. So our group is doing research in AI and medicine. And then on top of that, I was made leader of the Technology and Medicine student interest group. So my goal, my dream here, we'll see if it plays out, is to hook up the med students from Technology and Medicine, get them in touch with the AI interest group at U of M. And just be able to have them chat, have them, you know, bridge the gap there, because that really is where I see— that's where research needs to go. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:38]: As you think about the journey that you've been on, there is definitely things that you have to do to be able to find a balance, a balance between pushing yourself through a 1-year master's degree and getting through all of those courses and such to being in med school that's going to be pushing you in many different directions, like you said, to be able to memorize and learn and and to prepare yourself for the clinical portions of the degree itself. Talk to me about what you have had to do to be able to find balance, find balance in school and work and family and personal responsibilities while going through these very distinct graduate programs. Zoiya Morell [00:24:25]: And in the master's degree, sometimes that meant I was running a piece of code at night for multiple nights, falling asleep to my computer choking and dying. But I mean, part of that was fun as well. I chose to do that because it was so exciting to me. But also that means having family and friends that are like, hey, you need to actually eat. And what has come of that, and I've realized from med school, especially especially, is it's not sustainable or healthy to push yourself to the point of getting things done every single time immediately. Like, you have to be able to take time for yourself. So I've kind of gotten better at scheduling. I am not a schedule person. Zoiya Morell [00:25:06]: Don't show me a calendar, it will overwhelm me. But what I've kind of had to do is set aside certain blocks of time, and if I don't get enough done within that block of time, That's okay. That's the time I've set for myself and it, it's helped me a lot. So like for example, last semester in med school, wake up at 8:00 AM, study till like 12, have our lunch break, go to class until 5, watch the lectures for the next day until about 7. And then after 7:00 PM it was pretty much, I'm done for the day. I'm gonna play video games with my family, chat with my friends, take walks, that sort of thing. And I actually, from that, sometimes I'd get done early and I would tell myself, That doesn't mean you get to do extra. You're done early. Zoiya Morell [00:25:45]: That means you're done. So I've found quite a bit of free time. I've been able to keep up with reading novels, writing novels, playing video games, all sorts of things. So I'm actually doing a lot more of my hobbies now than I did during undergrad, cuz undergrad there was that you have to get a 4.0, you have to be perfect all the time. And now in med school I'm like, hey, I just need to pass. So a lot more relaxed. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:07]: Now, as you think back to your master's degree, but also what you're doing right now in your medical degree that you're working on, and you think about other people that are thinking about going to graduate school, whether it be a degree in AI, a degree in medical school, a degree in whatever it may be, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Zoiya Morell [00:26:32]: Oh my goodness. If I could just tell people to reach out to their professors, the number of times I'll get a student that will say, How do I get research? How do I do this? How do I, you know, find scholarships? How do I know which classes to take, what programs I will like, that sort of thing? I just tell people, reach out to your professors. The things and the opportunities you will get just because you talk to them about your interests is incredible. I got my first ever research in undergrad. This was on DNA sequencing with Dr. Sanders, just because he heard me talking in class about my interest in Computers and biology. He was like, hey, I heard you like computers. Wanna join this research? I was like, sure. Zoiya Morell [00:27:11]: So it's little things like that. Just reach out to people. Don't be afraid. They're there to help you. And also the number of opportunities you can get from that is just astounding. And don't be afraid to say when you don't understand something. There are no dumb questions. If there are, then I'm the queen of them. Zoiya Morell [00:27:29]: So it, it's totally okay to just go up to your professor and be like, Hey, this thing that everyone else in class seems to understand, I don't get it. Can you break it down like I'm a 5-year-old? And most of the time they'll say something like, hey, no one really understands this. Or yes, it is actually kind of complicated and no one gets it as well as they think they do. It's really good that you are trying to understand this. So ask questions, reach out to people, and I guarantee it will be so much easier. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:55]: Well, Zoe, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. I know it's not done, so I'm excited to be able to hear about your continued journey as you go through the rest of medical degree and learn more about those connections between AI and medicine and be able to work to help your patients to be able to make the profession even stronger. And I truly wish you all the best. Zoiya Morell [00:28:19]: Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me. This was great. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:28:21]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education, whether you're looking for in-person or online Online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Harnessing Your Why: Lucine Jarrah's Guide to Grad School Success
Are you considering graduate school, or searching for that extra spark of motivation to keep you moving forward on your academic journey? The latest episode of Victors in Grad School delivers a truly inspiring conversation between Dr. Christopher Lewis and Lucine Jarrah, a University of Michigan Flint alumna whose path from undergraduate studies to executive director shines a bright light on the power of purpose. At the heart of this episode is Lucine Jarrah's belief in making a difference through community work. As she recalls, her undergraduate years were marked by activism, organizing with nonprofits such as the Arab American Heritage Council, and building programs aimed at creating social impact. When the idea of graduate school first took root, it wasn't about collecting another credential or checking a box. Lucine Jarrah sought deeper knowledge and tools to drive meaningful change: "I really wanted to understand how systems shape people's lives. That's why I specifically sought out the Master's of Social Work with an emphasis in community change" (03:13). Throughout their conversation, Dr. Christopher Lewis and Lucine Jarrah explore the transition from undergraduate to graduate life—a leap magnified by the isolation of the pandemic. Building community and camaraderie, even in digital or distanced formats, became a lifeline "[We had to find a way to sort of be in community with each other so that it was safe, but also figure out how we can continue to lean on each other, support each other, and get through this time together" (07:19). One of the most powerful themes of the episode is learning to manage self-doubt. Like many graduate students, Lucine Jarrah faced imposter syndrome, intensified by the remote learning environment. Her advice? Seek mentors, stay involved, and never shy away from new opportunities—even if they feel intimidating at first. "Having wonderful people in the program… gave me the confidence, the mentorship, the guidance that I needed to ultimately feel like I could pursue all of the things that I wanted" (11:44). Balance, too, is indispensable—Lucine Jarrah describes the challenge of juggling work, family, and studies, and stresses the importance of organizing, prioritizing, and giving yourself permission to rest. If you're searching for a graduate school guide grounded in real-world experience, listen to Lucine Jarrah's story. The episode is filled with wisdom about growth, resilience, and the importance of knowing your "why." Tune in, get inspired, and take the first step toward your own journey of purpose-driven success. Ready to listen? Don't miss this uplifting episode of Victors in Grad School. Your future self will thank you. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week we have a great opportunity to be able to work together and help you to be able to move forward in that graduate school journey that you're on. I call it a journey because it truly is a journey. Every person that goes to graduate school has to go through an individualized journey for themselves to be able to get from where they are to where they want to be. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:43]: And what's important though, is that there are things that you can do, things that you could do right now that can help you to start thinking Like you're going to graduate school, thinking like you should be to be able to prepare yourself for graduate school, but also doing other things to be able to prepare you for graduate school. And that's why this podcast exists. Every week, I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can help you to be able to think in a different way, but also prepare yourself for graduate school in many different ways, because every person is going to have a little bit of a different experience in graduate school. And that's why every week I love being able to bring you different people with those different experiences that can help you along the way. Today we got another great guest. Lucine Jarrah is with us today, and Lucine is a graduate of the University of Michigan Flint. She got her undergraduate degree here at the University of Michigan Flint, and then she went on to get her MSW. We'll talk about that journey for herself as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:44]: And I'm really excited to be able to have her here and to share some of her experiences with you. Lucine, thanks so much for being here today. Lucine Jarrah [00:01:51]: Thank you, Chris. Excited to— Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:52]: Well, I'm excited to have you here today and to be able to talk about your own journey. And I always love being able to start these interviews with an opportunity to turn the clock back in time. And I said you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint. And at some point, at some point in that journey of getting that bachelor's in social work, you made a decision. You made a decision, I'm not going to just stop with that BSW. I'm going to continue on. I'm going to keep going to get my master's in social work. Bring me back to that moment. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:24]: What was going through your head and why did you decide that graduate school was right for you? Lucine Jarrah [00:02:29]: Yeah, I mean, I had a really amazing undergraduate experience here at the University of Michigan Flint. And, you know, during my time, I was really involved on campus. I was organizing on and off campus, actually, and I was getting really excited about thinking, you know, where I wanted to take my career and I was getting involved with some local nonprofits in the area, like the Arab American Heritage Council, and worked on numerous other campaigns related to general GOTV, getting out the vote, and then also like the widely known campaign, the One University campaign, which was about getting more funding and resources to the University of Michigan-Flint. So my role in all of that work and wanting to be able to do more and have more tools at my disposal to do more, I think was the biggest motivating factor for me to start thinking about grad school in a really serious way. I had all this wealth of experience doing organizing work and helping build programs, working with communities, but I really wanted to understand how systems shape people's lives. And that's why I specifically sought out this program at U of M Ann Arbor, the Master's of Social Work with an emphasis in community change. So for me, you know, it wasn't, it didn't feel like a random next step. It felt like something that was really connected to this question that I was having, which was, you know, how can I do more? How can I build my skills, improve my skills, improve my access to tools so that I can do better for my community? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:43]: And really, you answered my next question, which really was, you did go to the University of Michigan for that MSW program. Great program, and definitely has opportunities for being able to delve into the community work research and being able to better understand the people around you. But one of the questions that I always ask is, there are many different master's programs that are out there, and you kind of already explained, and you said that U of M's program was the right fit for you, and maybe that was the only program that you applied to. But were there other things that you were looking at when you were thinking about graduate schools that really allowed for you to be able to whittle that list down? Or was it really that there was just one that you really wanted? Lucine Jarrah [00:04:24]: So what was appealing to me about this particular program was the community change pathway. I think there's always been a very narrow view of social work. People tend to think of social work as very limited in scope when it's actually very, very broad in scope. And so there was something really exciting to me about pursuing something like social work and being able to do work that was very much connected to community organizing and systems-level change and all of that. And so I think it— At the time, I was sort of just asking myself the question, what kind of work am I trying to do? What skills do I need to grow into that work? Am I choosing grad school because it aligns with those goals or because I feel pressured to do it, to check a box? I was really, you know, doing a deep dive into thinking about these questions very seriously. And ultimately, I decided that it was a good fit for me because it was going to allow me to better service my community, which was the ultimate goal for me, and bring that knowledge and expertise back into the community, which is exactly what I did after grad school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:17]: I moved back to Pakistan. Now, every person goes through transitions as they go from one academic program to the next, one level of academic program to the next. And the way you're taught in undergrad is going to be very different than the way you're educated at the graduate level. And the expectations are different. Faculty are going to be expecting different things of you as a learner yourself. Talk to me about the journey that you went on yourself. And you were successful in that journey. You got through, you got your master's degree. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:45]: Talk to me about the transitions that you had to go through. And what did you have to do at the beginning of your graduate school journey to to transition into graduate school? And what did you have to do throughout that graduate school experience to maintain that success? Lucine Jarrah [00:06:01]: That's a good question. And honestly, I went into grad school at a really interesting time. I was— it was in the middle of the pandemic, actually. And so I was going into a field that really, for me, is all about community, right? It's about interacting with people on a pretty regular basis. And so to be living through a time where we were all super disconnected and far away from each other physically was really different and something I had to sort of navigate in the program while I was moving to Ann Arbor and getting acclimated to this new grad school journey. And so that was really different and something that I didn't necessarily expect. And I was really concerned about, you know, how it was going to impact my experience as a student and what I was going to be able to gain from the experience of doing the master's program. Because for me, you know, I was really excited about being able to do my internship and being able to work off campus. Lucine Jarrah [00:06:50]: For me, it was at a place called the Center for Community Well-Being. And so I was really excited about the opportunity to be in person and work with colleagues and talk about programs and do all of that work, you know, in person in a collaborative way, in a way that I was used to doing. And so that was certainly a challenge for me, you know, going into grad school is very different than my undergrad years where I was constantly on campus. I practically lived on campus. And I was, you know, always doing after-school things and always attending community events. And so we had to find a way to sort of be in community with each other so that it was safe, of course, during the pandemic, but also, you know, figure out how we can continue to lean on each other, support each other, and get through this time together. So we, you know, we found ways. It was not without its challenges, but we found ways to get through it. Lucine Jarrah [00:07:35]: And I think the biggest credit I could give is just being able to surround myself with such incredible people who were willing to take that challenge very seriously and still find ways to connect and just be with each other even under difficult circumstances. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:47]: Now, you mentioned a little bit earlier that after graduate school, you went back to your home community. You came back to Flint and you started working back at the Arab American Heritage Council and transitioned into that type of work again, after being involved with them as a younger individual working as an undergraduate student. And you have since transitioned into becoming the executive director of the Arab American Heritage Council. And I guess I would be interested to dig a little bit into the takeaways in the sense that you think back to your, your graduate school experience, and you learned a lot of different things. it relates to community work and relates to working with people. But talk to me about how you're utilizing what you learned in that graduate work on a daily basis. Lucine Jarrah [00:08:38]: Yeah, I mean, it's every day, right? So much of my graduate education was about learning to understand how systems and structures operate. I was in, you know, investigating systems and structures at a federal level. So how do agencies and institutions, organizations that we rely on, how do they operate? How do we ensure and hold them accountable so that they are actually effective and delivering delivering for community in a meaningful way. So a lot of these things I was exploring and unpacking in the classroom throughout my graduate school years. And so coming back into this job, I felt very much equipped with the knowledge and honestly with the advocacy framework to be able to then through the AHC do the work of fighting for that accountability, fighting for that oversight, and thinking more transformatively about how do we want systems to actually work for communities. How can we improve them? How can we imagine better for our communities and not just think in the ways that we've been sort of programmed to think about these systems and structures? So coming into the AHC right after grad school, I thought I was on top of the world and very excited about all of the ways that I was going to be able to utilize what I had learned in school and now actually be able to incorporate it into my work in the advocacy space, in the programming space, in all spaces through the Heritage Council to improve the mission and help advance the mission of the Heritage Council, but also help build the political power of our communities here in Flint and Genesee County so that we can again feel empowered in our ability to imagine better for our society, for our community. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:04]: One of the things that I would be interested in hearing from you on is every person as they go on into graduate school at one point or another run up against that proverbial wall when it comes to whether or not they feel like they truly belong, whether or not they feel like they know enough, that they are enough, that they can be enough to be able to be successful in that graduate school experience that they're going And many times they call it imposter syndrome, but there's other pieces with self-esteem and other things like that that go into it when you're entering into that new type of environment. Talk to me about how that impacted you and whether you did face imposter syndrome or self-doubt during graduate studies, and how did you handle it? Lucine Jarrah [00:10:50]: Oh yeah, I absolutely did. And I think it was exacerbated by the fact that we were all so disconnected and far away from each other physically, right? So I would say I leaned heavily on identifying mentors in grad school and And not really shying away from any opportunity to get involved in things, even if it felt a little bit nerve-wracking or something that I perhaps wasn't used to doing or didn't have the skill set as somebody else perhaps who was going into it. So really not shying away from the opportunity, but leaning on folks in that space to help guide me and feeling like I, I could build those relationships and lean on those relationships for support. And that helped me a lot. It helped me establish incredible mentors throughout my time in my grad school program. And it allowed me to feel more confident in my ability to take on new challenges. And so, it was certainly a process, and I did go through periods where it felt particularly challenging for me to show up in certain spaces because I didn't necessarily feel like I was meant to be there. But I think having wonderful people in the program constantly in communication with me and working with me and so many other spaces, it gave me the confidence, it gave me the mentorship, the guidance that I needed to ultimately feel like I could pursue all of the things that I wanted to pursue. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:59]: And how did you balance both school, work, family, personal responsibilities while going through graduate school? Lucine Jarrah [00:12:06]: Oh, I have no idea. I have no idea. It was hard. It was really, really hard. I, you know, I had to find a way to get organized. I had to make sure that I wasn't burning myself out. I was still very much connected to the Heritage Council even throughout my grad school years. Actually, that's sort of how I was able to ultimately pursue the executive director job afterwards was staying so connected to the council. Lucine Jarrah [00:12:28]: throughout undergrad and in grad school. So I was working full-time, I was in school, I, you know, I had family commitments. It was, it was very, very difficult. And I definitely went through periods where I, I had to sort of sit down with myself and reground and, and really think about, you know, you're gonna burn yourself out if you don't take a time to get organized, take time to rest, take time to prioritize things. So it was really a mix of that, right? It was really thinking about, okay, what are the things that I absolutely need to prioritize here and, and commit to? And what are some other things that I can maybe put on the back burner for a little bit? and come back to at a later time. And so again, I think this question is also connected to the last one, which is that having incredible mentors and guidance in grad school, whether that's through faculty, staff, other students, or the relationships I was building with the community, they helped me along the way. They reminded me of the importance of taking time to rest and take breaks and not feel like I have to say yes to everything all the time. And also think about, you know, what does it mean to like meaningfully prioritize the things that I'm doing so that I can commit to them in the ways that I, I want to, right? Because that's the other thing about me is I really want to give 100% commitment to everything that I do. Lucine Jarrah [00:13:34]: And of course, we're all human. And so doing that for 4 or 5, 6 different things just means you're gonna burn yourself out really fast. So yeah, I definitely give lots of credit to just the wonderful people in my life who continue and to this day continue to remind me to take time to talk about— Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:49]: You talked about the relationships and the mentors that you built and things like that. Talk to me about those relationships and what you had to do to be able to build those relationships with faculty or peers that helped you to find success in that journey. Lucine Jarrah [00:14:06]: Yeah, I think this is the other thing that can be, you know, nerve-wracking about grad school, going to a grad school that, of course, U of M is a little bigger than U of M Flint. And so the benefit of being at U of M Flint is it felt like you could end class and go up to your professor and talk to them and even walk them to their next class or meeting or go to their office hours. Having the smaller class sizes meant that you were building more intimate relationships with your faculty and professors, whereas going to a place like U of M Ann Arbor, it was a little bit more of a challenge to develop those relationships, but also I was going during the time of the pandemic, which made it even more of a challenge because we were all remote. And so I think what I, you know, ultimately did was I would send emails to faculty that I was, you know, I was really interested in their research or I really wanted to work with them, or I came across something that they were actively involved in in the community. A program they were helping to run, something like that. And so, I would send an email, I would reach out to them, and I would say, you know, I would love to have 5, 10 minutes of your time just to chat with you. And from there, you know, usually they, you know, would either, you know, be honest about their capacity to take on, uh, somebody like an intern or to have somebody shadow them, or they would connect me to another resource. And so, I think just taking that initial step to reach out and express, you know, my interest, express my excitement, my passion for what I want to do, and why I'm interested in working with them. Lucine Jarrah [00:15:22]: It definitely went a long way. And even if I didn't end up working with that particular faculty member, I always felt like they were wonderful people who were always willing to connect me with others who aligned with my interest and my passion and my work. So it's always just about that first step. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:37]: And how do you find that graduate school changed the way you think, you work, or you approach problems? Lucine Jarrah [00:15:45]: I think it gave me more of a, I guess, a framework, a new perspective for how I engage in the work that I do. Like I said, I think for me, the appeal of this program, of Master of Social Work program and the Community Change Pathway, was that I was already doing work like this, but I wanted better— I wanted to improve my skills, and I wanted better tools at my disposal so that I can engage in the work in a more meaningful way. And so, you know, for me, it felt like walking away from the program, I felt like I did have a new perspective of looking at my work, a new framework for doing things like advocacy, new connections, new relationships. So it gave me a lot of the things that I obviously still tap into to this day in this work as a nonprofit leader, but also in my other work outside of the Heritage Council as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:40]: No, Now, as you think about the journey that you went on and you think about other individuals that are thinking about going to graduate school themselves, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Lucine Jarrah [00:16:56]: I would say really think about your why. Graduate school is not just about earning another degree. For me, it was about building tools and relationships and the confidence to do the work that you feel called to do, right? For me, it was work in community and in the nonprofit sector. For others, it might be different. But being able to think about your why and have a good solid answer to fall back on is really important because there's going to be numerous challenges that come your way throughout grad school. It's not easy. And to be able to come back and think about, okay, what is my purpose? Why am I doing this? Why did I get myself into this? It's going to be in a really important way to continue to motivate you and inspire you on your path. So I would say absolutely be really thoughtful about why you're doing this, why you are picking the program that you are, and how it's going to continue to inspire and motivate you down the line. Lucine Jarrah [00:17:55]: And also, I was just going to say, and you also don't have to have all the answers figured out. That was something else I struggled with in grad school is I thought I had to have it all figured out all the time. But it's, you know, it's an opportunity for you to learn and grow, and you might change your mind about things, and that's okay. So don't feel like you have to have it all figured out. It's definitely meant for you to be able to grow and explore new things and answer and find new answers to questions and all of that. So I would just say, be open to it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:30]: Well, Lucienne, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today, for the great work that you're doing in Flint and within your community. And I truly wish you all the best. Lucine Jarrah [00:18:42]: Thank you so much, Chris. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:43]: The University of Michigan-Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a Victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Navigating Grad School: Rebecca Pettengill on Balance, Growth, and Resilience
Are you considering graduate school, currently navigating your graduate journey, or reflecting on your academic path? The latest episode of Victors in Grad School delivers invaluable advice and reassurance for anyone on this transformative journey. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis and featuring special guest Rebecca Pettengill, Manager of Foundation and Corporate Relations at the Community Foundation of Greater Flint, the conversation centers on not just navigating graduate school, but truly thriving. A Non-Linear Academic Journey One of the most striking themes from this episode is Rebecca Pettengill's unconventional path. Her undergraduate degree took 13 years to complete due to balancing full-time work and part-time studies, proving that there's no single right way to pursue higher education. She's candid about the challenges and delays, yet highlights how building relationships during her undergraduate years later supported her academic and professional pursuits. Strategic Choices and Growth When selecting a graduate program, Rebecca Pettengill intentionally chose an MBA over a master's in public administration to diversify her resume and broaden her opportunities. The cohort structure of the program offered much-needed structure and camaraderie, making the rigorous journey more manageable. She also underscores how workplace flexibility and supportive family dynamics were key in finding a balance between professional, academic, and personal responsibilities. Navigating Barriers and Self-Doubt Rebecca Pettengill is refreshingly honest about the hurdles she encountered—especially preparing for the GMAT after years away from mathematics. Her perseverance, conditional admission, and commitment to hard work were pivotal to her success. Study groups and supportive peers, including international students, created a collaborative environment where everyone's unique strengths contributed to collective achievements. Impostor syndrome and self-doubt are realities for many, and Rebecca Pettengill is no exception. She shares how working with a diverse cohort and celebrating small wins helped her realize everyone brings something valuable to the table—even when uncertainty creeps in. The Power of Relationships Strong relationships were central to Rebecca Pettengill's journey—whether with faculty who became mentors or classmates who evolved into a reliable professional network. These bonds didn't just provide academic support; they continued to open career doors and create opportunities long after graduation. Advice for Future Graduate Students Rebecca Pettengill encourages prospective graduate students to view a master's degree as both a commitment to themselves and a catalyst for lifelong learning. In a world of constant change, advanced education offers both adaptability and new possibilities—regardless of your career stage. Ready to hear more firsthand wisdom and inspiring stories? Listen to this episode of Victors in Grad School for actionable strategies and a reassuring reminder: your unique path can lead to incredible success. Tune in now and take the next step in your graduate school journey! TRANSCRIPT Rebecca Pettengill [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love being able to sit down, talk to you, work with you as you are getting yourself ready to move toward those goals that you've set in front of you. And for you, it may be that you've already made that application to graduate school. Maybe you're just thinking about graduate school. Maybe you're in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:38]: No matter where you are in this journey, it is a journey. Because if you're at the very beginning or you're getting close to the end, there are things that you can do right now to be able to find success in this graduate school journey. And that's why this podcast exists. Every week, I love being able to bring you different tips, tricks, things that you can do, some things you can put into your own toolbox to help you to find that success. And that's why every week I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that have gone through graduate school themselves, and for them to allow you to learn from their experience to help you on your journey. Today we got another great guest. Rebecca Pettengill is with us today. Rebecca is the manager of Foundation and Corporate Relations at the Community Foundation of Greater Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:29]: And she has her own graduate school journey, as I've already mentioned. She did her undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint, getting a bachelor's degree in public administration, and then went on from there. We'll talk about that. But I'm really excited to have Rebecca here. Rebecca, thanks so much for being here today. Rebecca Pettengill [00:01:46]: Thank you, Christopher. I appreciate it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:48]: Well, I really appreciate you being here and for sharing your own journey. And I wanna turn the clock back in time. I said that you did your undergraduate work here at the University of Michigan Flint. And once you got done And then with that degree, you went off, you got some experiences, and had some opportunities to work at the University of Michigan Flint doing development work. And at some point in that transition from undergrad into your professional life, you made a decision. You made a decision that you wanted to not be done. And you decided to go to graduate school. Bring me back to that point. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:23]: What was going through your head? And what made you decide that that was the right time? to go to graduate school? Rebecca Pettengill [00:02:28]: Well, I had sort of languished in earning my bachelor's degree. I worked full-time and part-time all the while I was working on my degree. And of course, as you grow up, things change in your mind about what you hope for in your career or your life goals. And so, you know, I originally kind of started out in a business degree and then moved more to the public administration side. And that took me 13 years. I don't recommend it highly to incoming freshmen to take that route, but because it delays your earning power later on in life. So, but anyway, I did take that path and everything happens for a purpose, I think, in life and all your experiences add up. So I had a lot of courses all throughout the university and with my career at U of M Flint, actually that turned out to be beneficial because Professors knew me, other department secretaries knew me, people in administration knew me, and, you know, that served me well going forward. Rebecca Pettengill [00:03:38]: And then I decided to add the master's degree and just to expand my resume, I decided to do the business degree for my master's for a couple reasons. Just like I said, to make my resume a little more broad. And to give me other experiences. At the time, I was working at the recreation center, which was very much considered a business unit at the campus at that time. And so we had goals there as far as earning our keep and not costing the university too much money. Yeah. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:18]: So you decided to do the MBA and going through the MBA program, you got your bachelor's in public administration and you could have done a master's in public administration or some other type of a degree. What was it about the MBA that made you decide that that was the right fit and the right program for you? Rebecca Pettengill [00:04:35]: Well, it was really at the time a little bit where I was at the recreation center in managing the business office there. And then also in the undergrad program, I had taken a lot of the courses, or a number of the courses were shared as master's and bachelor's courses. So I had had some coursework that was already part of the public administration master's. So that was sort of an impetus to do something different with the master's level degree. And so the MBA was kind of in my wheelhouse of experience and so on. I also was drawn to it a little bit because at that time it was set up as a cohort. And so I knew I'd have a set of people and I had a sort of a regimented progression to get through it. And that was helpful as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:30]: Now, for everyone that goes through a graduate program, you go through a transition. You go through a transition from going from undergrad into first, it was for you, for work. And then you went from work back into school after a few years of not being in school. And there is a distinct transition because the way you're educated as an undergraduate student is not the same as the way in which you're educated as a graduate student. And you have to do things to not only set yourself up for success, but be able to prepare yourself for ultimate success throughout the program. So as you think back to that graduate degree and going through the MBA, what were the things that you had to do to set yourself up for success as you transitioned into the program? And what were some of the things that you had to do to maintain that success throughout the entire journey? Rebecca Pettengill [00:06:19]: Yeah, a big challenge actually was the GMAT test. And that was where my relationships through campus kind of paid off because they took a chance on me. I didn't score very well in the mathematics section. It had been a long time since I had been in high school mathematics and done those things. And even my undergrad mathematics were something that I took early on. So that was quite a challenge to prepare for that test, to go into it. And I was fortunate they gave me a conditional admit, but I had good grades to back it up and worked hard. And that was where all Also, it was really nice to work with study groups. Rebecca Pettengill [00:07:03]: Some of us ended up, because it was a cohort, we kind of followed together. And so there was a group of us that worked together and that was helpful too. We had a nice young man from China who was in our cohort and he was very, very helpful. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:19]: Now, when you go into graduate school and you're going through this while you're working and you were working while you were going through this education, there is truly a balance that you have to find. Whether it's through not only your schoolwork, but also balancing work and family and personal responsibilities. Talk to me about what you had to do to find that balance for yourself. Rebecca Pettengill [00:07:44]: Well, I was kind of fortunate because where I worked at the rec center, the office was open a lot. They were open long hours to accommodate members and students. And so I could kind of flex my time if I needed to. Like if I had an exam coming or something like that, I was able to flex my time a little bit. That was helpful. And then also with my particular family life, my husband always worked late as a UPS driver. And so I had a lot of downtime right after work that I was able to utilize to attend classes. Most of my classes were at night. Rebecca Pettengill [00:08:23]: And so that worked out in my instance. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:27]: I was able to negotiate some of those barriers that other people might Every student goes through a point in which, like you said earlier, when you were going through that GMAT and you hadn't had math in a really long time, that you feel like, am I made for this? Is this right? Am I good enough? And there's that feeling of imposter syndrome or self-doubt that sneaks in. Talk to me about how you faced imposter syndrome or self-doubt during your graduate studies, and how did you handle it? Rebecca Pettengill [00:08:58]: You know, it's interesting because I think In the different courses, there were different challenges. And so, I remember a lot of our people at that time were working at General Motors, and they were engineers and different things like that. And I remember one of the courses that we had was a simulation where we had to create a business and sell the product and up our manufacturing and all of that. And this One fellow and I ended up in a group together, and neither of us really had that experience, but he had a lot of experience in sales. And so we, against all odds, we ended up prevailing in that simulation on a number of occasions, having sales and being able to amp up production because he knew enough about sales to understand all that. And it just showed me that people that might not seem the strongest for your team or the effort sometimes come through and have that secret sauce that you need to be successful. And it showed the benefit of working with other people with other abilities and strengths. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:21]: So as you were going through your graduate school journey and you talked about connecting with students like you did in that experience and going through graduate school, a lot of times one of the things that's important is building those relationships and building relationships with other cohort members, but also building relationships with faculty. Talk to me about the relationships that you were able to build and what relationships ended up being most impactful for you and why. Rebecca Pettengill [00:10:48]: Well, the course that my career took after having the MBA, I ended up working in the development office or institutional advancement, it might be called now, and I ended up Being the first person that worked in corporate and foundation relations at U of M Flint, there were people in the Ann Arbor campus, and that was helpful to have them as mentors, I would say. But having a diverse set of experiences ended up serving me well in that position, having to assess opportunities for the campus and then knowing the faculty and being able to find out who might be able to take on the opportunity, the grant opportunity or research opportunity. Understanding a little bit about research and how that works was really helpful. And so all of those things kind of just added up to make this a really good fit. Getting that business understanding, having those— the faculty members to go back to and ask questions. And then the ongoing relationships with different students that were in my, my MBA cohort mostly has been really rewarding. We had a lot of really good people that were in our group and we got quite close, I would say. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:13]: Now, thinking back to your graduate school experience and thinking about what you had to do to find success in that journey, and you think— and thinking about others that are thinking about graduate school for themselves, no matter if it's in the MBA or some other area, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Rebecca Pettengill [00:12:34]: Because my experience is heavily with the university in the beginning, I would say that if you are able to pursue the master's degree, whatever it might be, I think there's great benefit in having the bachelor's degree and the basis of information that provides you for life and for many different types of experiences. And then to be able to go on and add another layer to that at the master's level, I think it demonstrates a commitment to yourself as an individual and your willingness to continue to learn in life. And it's just so important, especially now as things are changing so fast in our world. And new discoveries and all of those things. It's important to have that extra learning, and I just highly recommend it. It just gives you so many more options and opportunities to pursue, especially when you're younger. Well, even when you're an old lady like me, it served me well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:41]: Well, Rebecca, I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for being here today, for sharing your own journey in your graduate education, and I truly wish you all the best. Rebecca Pettengill [00:13:50]: Thank you very much. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:51]: The University of Michigan-Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Finding Success in Grad School: Gillian Wilhelm's Physician Assistant Journey
What does it really take to chart a successful course through graduate school? That's the question at the heart of this week's episode of the Victors in Grad School podcast, where Dr. Christopher Lewis welcomes Gillian Wilhelm, a second-year Physician Assistant student at the University of Michigan-Flint, to open up about her own journey—the doubts, the decisions, and the lessons learned along the way. The episode kicks off with Dr. Christopher Lewis emphasizing that every grad school journey is unique, but that hearing from others can help you add tools to your "success toolbox." Gillian Wilhelm's story is no exception. She traces her decision to enter the physician assistant (PA) field back to her junior year at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like so many, the uncertainty of that period forced her to re-evaluate her goals. She weighed her options—medicine, nursing, or something else entirely—before discovering the PA career through a friend's recommendation. What resonated was the balance of hands-on patient care and work-life flexibility, ultimately fueling her passion. Preparation, Gillian Wilhelm shares, was key—not just academically, but practically. She discusses the importance of researching programs, understanding prerequisites, and gaining patient care experience. Her pragmatic tip? Make sure you meet admissions criteria before sinking money into applications—a lesson learned through creating spreadsheets, taking extra courses, and shadowing various healthcare professionals. Once in grad school, juggling personal and academic expectations became crucial. Gillian Wilhelm candidly discusses the reality of adjusting to a demanding program: learning how to study again, relying on the support of therapy and family, and experimenting with different study and self-care strategies until she found what worked for her. She's honest about imposter syndrome but stresses the power of simply "showing up for yourself" each day, whether or not you feel confident. The episode also highlights the importance of community. Building relationships with classmates—often by just suggesting a walk to class—becomes a lifeline, as does forming connections with thoughtful faculty who genuinely want students to succeed. Gillian Wilhelm found meaning in serving as cohort president, helping bridge students and faculty concerns, reinforcing the theme that success often grows from collaboration and communication. If you're considering graduate school, this episode is a must-listen. Through Gillian Wilhelm's authentic reflections, "Victors in Grad School" offers not just advice but genuine encouragement: do your homework, embrace your unique journey, build your community, and remember—it's about progress, not perfection. Tune in to the full episode for inspiration and wisdom you can carry into your own academic adventure. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love being able to have an opportunity to sit down, to talk to you, to work with you as you are preparing to go on your own graduate school journey. And I call it a journey because it is a journey. Every person that is thinking about graduate school has to go through a distinct and unique journey for themselves. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:39]: But there are things that you can do, things that you can do right now that'll help you to prepare yourself for graduate school. That's why every week, I love being able to provide you with opportunities to learn, to grow, and to meet new people with different experiences that can share some of their own graduate school journey with you. That's why this podcast exists. It is here to help you to be able to listen to other people's experiences, to take in what works, set aside what doesn't work, and add some tools to your toolbox that'll help you to move forward in your own journey that you're on. This week, we got another great guest. Jillian Wilhelm is with us. I'm really excited to have Jillian here with us today. Jillian is a second year graduate student in the physician Assistant program at the University of Michigan, Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:28]: And, and we're gonna be talking about the journey that she has gone through to be able to get to where she is today and that she's going through right now to be able to help you in your own graduate school journey. Jillian, thanks so much for being here today. Gillian Wilhelm [00:01:41]: Thank you for having me, Dr. Lewis. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:43]: Well, it is my pleasure having you here today. I'm really excited to be able to talk to you. And I always love to start these conversations with an opportunity to turn the clock back in time. And what I'd love to do is go back. I wanna go back in time, back to that time back at University of Michigan. You were working on that bachelor's degree in neuroscience. And whether it was during your time at Ann Arbor or at some other point, there was a point in time where you said to yourself, I'm not done. I'm going to continue on. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:11]: And you had that spark in your head that said, I want to be a physician assistant. Bring me back to that point. And what was going through your head. Gillian Wilhelm [00:02:18]: That point for me came in my junior Year at U of M Ann Arbor, it was the middle of COVID I was living on campus because I was an ra. So at that time, I'm not sure how familiar you or anyone else listening was or is with the situation that we were in. But because of the super high number of cases, the university was instructed to kind of shut down and have all students who were able to return to their homes, return homes. And we had a mostly online experience then for the rest of that semester. But because I had the opportunity to be an ra, we still had students, athletes, international students who were there. So I was still living on campus. And being in the middle of the pandemic, we really didn't know what was going on. But I knew even still then when I went, when I started my bachelor's, I knew I wanted to do something in medicine, and I just wasn't fully sure what. Gillian Wilhelm [00:03:12]: And then being in the middle of the pandemic, we didn't really know what was going to happen. We didn't know how long we were going to be in that situation for. And I was having some doubts of, well, do I want to go the medical school route? That's a lot of other schooling, a lot of research, and just volunteering. Shadowing opportunities are super limited. I could do nursing, but that would be an extra bachelor's degree. And I was already most of the way towards my neuroscience degree. And I actually had a really good friend reach out to me. She was also in college at the time. Gillian Wilhelm [00:03:45]: We'd been friends since kindergarten. And she sent me this article about what a PA was, and I had no idea of what a PA was. I'd never heard of them before. And she was like, I found this career, and this seems, like, really great. And it seems like exactly what you and I want to do. And I read the article, and it was truly just like, it mentioned work, life, balance, it mentioned still all of the patient interaction I was looking for. And I just thought it was a really unique thing. It was a role that was really rooted in teamwork. Gillian Wilhelm [00:04:19]: You got to be a collaborator with many different people, many different professions, whether outpatient or inpatient. And that was that, like, you mentioned, that kind of seed or that kind of spark. And I just. I kept looking more into the profession, and as the year progressed and as I looked closer to graduating, I started looking more into the role, and I realized, like, that's what I want to do after I graduate. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:42]: Now, I know that after you graduated, you went, you got some experiences, some work experiences that allowed for you to prepare yourself for applying to physician assistant programs. Because for most PA programs you're going to need to see at least about 500 hours. Sometimes it's, it's much more than that. Sometimes it's right at the minimum. But, but you do have to have some hours of direct patient contact experience. And you did do that. You went out and you had some experiences for yourself to prepare yourself. And as you got into that year when you were applying to physician assistant programs, I'm sure that you were looking across many different types of schools and trying to identify, okay, what's the best fit for me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:23]: You ended up choosing to attend the University of Michigan Flint. But talk me through that process for yourself and what did you do to be able to not only prepare yourself for that academic, for that admission journey, but also how did you look and try to break down for yourself what were the programs that you were going to apply to and how did you ultimately decide that the University of Michigan Flint was the right program for you? Gillian Wilhelm [00:05:50]: So I did a lot of research when I was looking at programs. I know statistically it's such a growing like profession and a growing field that the admissions journey is, can be very hard and very challenging just because it's a super high demand field and you have a lot of wonderful applicants who are all applying for that, those limited number of spots as you. But my journey was really just a lot of research. I knew I graduated from U of M at Ann Arbor in 2022 and then I applied during the, I think it was like the 2425 CYC because then with U of M Flint we started in January of 25. So I knew I was researching quite a bit with some classes have like, or some schools have term limits. So some of the classes I took for my degree back in like my sophomore year. So like 2019, 2020, there are limits with like how long they'll accept those classes versus like how soon you can take. So some places have five year limits, some places have 10. Gillian Wilhelm [00:06:52]: So I had to do a lot of research to make sure that like the schools I was interested in I could actually like meet the admissions criteria for. Because applying to PA school is super expensive and I didn't want to put money towards application fees to a school that I knew like wouldn't accept my credits or my classes or things like that. So that was definitely something I had to spend a lot of time looking into. I had a big spreadsheet, a lot of different notes. My Google Drive got a lot of use, which was Great. And then I ended up as well, working as a physical therapy aide for about five months. And then I was a nursing, a certified nursing assistant for the majority of my patient care experience. So that was also something I knew that I wanted to be in a hospital and I wanted to really kind of immerse myself in that, like, healthcare environment because I had never been in an environment like that before, so I wanted to really get a feel. Gillian Wilhelm [00:07:48]: And even though I knew I wanted to be a PA, I wanted to see like how PAs were in kind of that natural environment. So with working. And then I also was fortunate to shadow a couple different PAs. I shadowed one in the ER, I shadowed a cardiology PA and then as well as an interventional radiology PA. So I got to see how they interacted with patients and other healthcare professionals. And those all really solidified. That's what I wanted to do for a career and kept me going through the admissions process for sure. Because when you're sitting there staring at multiple essays, your big spreadsheet, and you're trying to just figure everything out and keep everything going, you kind of need that extra motivation. Gillian Wilhelm [00:08:27]: You can just remember, like, I really saw how that PA worked with that patient and that was really key for me, is to remind myself like, that's where I want to be. So to make all of the paperwork and the research worth it. And then for U of M specifically I, or U of M Flint specifically, I really was interested in the fact that they have a 16 month didactic year. That was something that Most programs are 12 months didactic and then 12 months for clinicals. And as someone who I had been out of school for a couple years and while I still had a big science background, I mean, you, if you're not using all of that knowledge all day every day, sometimes it can be a little tricky to review back on and get back in that mindset of a student. And I thought the 16 month didactic would be a great opportunity for me to just have maybe a little more time to just like kind of flush out some topics. So that was definitely a draw as well. And then, I mean, I graduated from U of M Ann Arbor, so why not try and keep it in the U of M family, you know? But yeah, and then I went. Gillian Wilhelm [00:09:27]: I was lucky enough to be selected for an interview and I really liked the professors. All of the students I spoke with on my interview day were all just had really positive things to say and I just thought their admissions process was truly holistic. I think that's something A lot of programs say, and I can't speak to other programs, but when I went for my interview and then as well as just like the supplemental essays that you. The prompts that U of M Flint asked about, those were things that I felt truly added on to my application. Because definitely some other programs, it's like they ask for essays that I kind of felt were. I was repeating myself with the other things I had had in my application. And U of M's prompts were just. It allowed me to show like, other aspects of my character and my ethics and kind of like my moral compass. Gillian Wilhelm [00:10:18]: And I just thought that was really cool. And I made sure to let them know that too when they asked us, like for questions or feedback because it was just something else that I felt made me stand out and just like kind of showed how else or how I carry myself and who I am outside of just the same essays that you kind of send to everybody. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:36]: Now, for every person that's going to graduate school, there is a transition that you go through. Now you had a transition out of undergrad into the workforce. You worked for a little bit of time and then you made a transition to graduate school. And as you make those transitions, there's definitely a different bar when it comes to going from undergrad to grad. There's a different way that you're being educated and the expectations are also different. And every person has to be able to maneuver through that for themselves. Now, you found success in graduate school. Thus far, you've been able to maneuver through this process for yourself. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:12]: And as you think about the transition that you had going into graduate school, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success, and what have you had to do to maintain that success throughout your graduate school journey thus far? Gillian Wilhelm [00:11:27]: That's a great question. The first thing that came to mind, truthfully, was having a good relationship with my therapist, which obviously is not specifically academic related, but that was something I knew I wanted to continue. Just having another person to kind of like a third party to just like really hear me out and help me like process and work through the big, like, emotional changes and just amount of stress I was under with that transition. So he definitely helped me through quite a bit of that and helped me just process and make some good changes to help keep me mentally healthy as well as making sure I could get to class and get through class okay. So that was my first thought for sure for the big transitions. Otherwise, definitely relearning how to be a student. Because like you said, I'd been in the workforce for a few years, and I hadn't truly been, like, studying and getting back into that mindset and kind of unlearning older, not very helpful study habits. I think I had a unique undergrad experience just with being in the pandemic and having constant, like, academic changes of, like, if we could be in person, if we can't, if we're online. Gillian Wilhelm [00:12:35]: So those were challenging to build, like, good study habits, at least for me. So then coming into grad school with having just even a greater amount of material, but having it come a lot faster and just being more unfamiliar with quite a bit of the material, that was definitely something where I had to really just try different study techniques and different study habits. And as I kind of went through, I realized what was working and what wasn't. So that was definitely something I had to continuously work on and realize, like, hey, I tried this last week. I don't think it worked for me. Or last week, last month, last unit, last body system. Let's try something else this time. And that's something I hear quite a bit from just, like, talking with my other classmates or even myself, looking back to where I was, like, starting the program, for some people, they really figure out what works for them and how to study and like that, and they stick with it. Gillian Wilhelm [00:13:31]: And that's great for me. It definitely took some trial and error. And I, when asked about it, I truly don't feel like I really had my good study habits down until, like, last fall. It took me a couple semesters, and I'm happy I got to that point. But I'm also okay with the fact that I went through some trial and error, and now I know, like, what sticks and what helps. So that's definitely a big part of the transition, is relearning how to be a student, especially if you're not someone who just finished your undergrad and went right into the program, which is wonderful and advantageous if you have those good study habits. But it was just something I had to relearn and kind of go through. And then I think otherwise. Gillian Wilhelm [00:14:09]: For the transition, to set myself up for success, I think it was still keeping in touch with my family. My family is, like, my biggest support system. Coming into the program, I really didn't know anybody. I didn't have any, like, former classmates. My friends who were also on their PA journey were going to different programs. So that was definitely. I leaned on my family quite a bit, and I still do, and I'm very thankful for their support and their Understanding and picking up the phone, even if it's late at night when I just need to talk about something. So that's, I appreciate that a great amount as well, more than I could probably ever say in words otherwise. Gillian Wilhelm [00:14:46]: Setting up for success. You just have to keep showing up. I think that was the other thing I learned was even when I was super tired and frustrated of I still couldn't understand a topic or I didn't get through as many questions as I wanted to the night before. Still showing up as much as you can every day and just be willing to just keep showing up for yourself and just keep going. Okay, I know yesterday was hard, but maybe today will be a little better. And that's all you can really do is like just keep showing up for yourself. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:14]: Now talk to me a little bit about that connection and that balance that you had to find for yourself. Because you know you're in a program that is a high stress program. It is, there's a lot of expectations. You are on campus and it is a full time program. So it is an intense program. So talk to me about balance and how did you balance school, work, family, personal responsibilities while in graduate school. Gillian Wilhelm [00:15:38]: For me, I think living on campus definitely helped. I know that was something. When I was considering all the financial aspects of attending a grad school, I was really torn between like commuting or living on campus. And I ultimately kind of chose to live on campus just for the commute and then kind of saving myself a little time that way. So that definitely helped the balance of. I, if I stayed up a little late studying, I could sleep in and still make, get to class with plenty of time even with the weather because we, we love Michigan winters and they're unpredictability. But I think for balance it was, it was something it took me a while to figure out. U of M Flint's program starts in January. Gillian Wilhelm [00:16:21]: So it's dark when you go to class, it's dark when you come home. The weather's not super great. So definitely that is just a little external factor. But I think overall for balance, it just kind of took me a while to figure out. It was also my first time like truly living alone and making sure to cook for myself. I hadn't really lived alone in that capacity since undergrad and making sure I was able to balance, making sure I could eat, I could eat okay. Making sure I could cook. I definitely meal prepping was super helpful for my balance of I would cook on the weekends and then have things to eat throughout the week and that definitely helped for me. Gillian Wilhelm [00:16:59]: I could come home, have something ready to eat, and then continue to study or do whatever else I needed to. So that definitely helped. And I'm still continuing to do that as I've gone through grad school. That's helped a lot. And I, I think finding a schedule that works for you. Fridays for me were my cleaning days. I'm someone who thrives on routine. So even just outside of academics, like I liked having, like my Friday was my end of the week. Gillian Wilhelm [00:17:24]: I would do my grocery shop thing and I would clean and it was like my reset for the week. And then I would go into that, I think definitely focusing more on the outside factors, but I'll get to the academics in a second. But I think otherwise too. I'm just very fortunate, like I mentioned earlier, to have the support of my family, of them knowing that I would wouldn't be able to attend every family party, every event, everything that I really want to. But understanding that this is a two and a two and a third year commitment and they know that it's the career I've been working towards my whole life. So really just thankful for having their support and knowing like, if I can't come home for this, then it's my parents and my sister driving out and going to breakfast on a later week when I don't have an exam. So I really appreciated their flexibility and their willingness to keep me involved as much as they could and make sure they really just emphasize that we know you're working for your career. You have your whole rest of your life to go to family birthday parties and things. Gillian Wilhelm [00:18:26]: So having that support and understanding really helped me manage that balance and that kind of fear of just missing people and like missing those things when I'm stuck when I'm studying and then academic balance as well. I think something that took me a while to learn too was just understanding that sometimes things might take you longer to understand or to process. I definitely was someone who would see classmates, things just clicked for them or they really just got into their studying pattern right away and they were super successful and I was really happy for them, but then really frustrated that that wasn't happening for me. I felt like I was taking super long to understand the same concepts that they were or stuff just wasn't processing or clicking for me in the same way. And I think once I realized that that's okay and as long as I KE working at it, that definitely helped. I no longer found myself like comparing myself to other classmates. It was more like that's wonderful that they're getting it. Like, that's great, but let's just find a way that you can get it too. Gillian Wilhelm [00:19:27]: And then definitely just making sure I was sleeping def. I know everyone says, like, oh, you don't really sleep in grad school, but you do have to. That definitely helps your academic performance, is making sure you do get sleep. And then also I'm someone. I learned that studying by myself is for the most part what I need. But sometimes, like studying with a friend or alongside a friend or a group of friends was helpful too, because then you have someone to tap on the shoulder and say, hey, do you get this? Can you explain this to me? And then maybe you can explain a concept to them. So sometimes my hangouts with my classmates would be, we all go to the library together for an evening and just sit at the same big table and study independently, but then have our little breaks where we can kind of chat quietly and compare topics or compare notes. So I feel like the process of balance is truly different for everyone. Gillian Wilhelm [00:20:20]: If I had to kind of sum up my thoughts, I know I kind of went in a bunch of different directions. But I think that's to say that balance doesn't look the same for everyone. And that's okay. You just have to remember if it's working for you in the sense of you're accomplishing what you need to studying wise, while you're also like taking care of yourself physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, how, in whatever way speaks true for you, then I think that's the best way to figure out, like, if you are really balancing everything to make sure you're still a person throughout while also being like a grad student. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:53]: Those are great points. Now also, every one of us go to graduate school, there's a point in time where you hit that wall, that proverbial wall where you say to yourself, am I made for this? Am I? Is this really? Am I going to be good at this? And it's that self doubt, it's that imposter syndrome that everyone faces. And it's hard to explain it and it's hard to help someone to understand it. But talk to me about that for yourself. Did you face it? What did you have to do to be able to handle it? And maybe you're still handling it and that's okay too, but how do you continue to handle it if that's the case too? Gillian Wilhelm [00:21:31]: Yeah, I definitely had imposter syndrome and definitely at the beginning. And even so, sometimes, like, I was really feeling it before we went to clinicals of just like, I've spent 16 months learning all the textbook stuff. Like, how is that going to be in the. In the real world? Because it's just a whole different aspect of. You no longer have the textbook cases of conditions or diseases you have now, like, true people who aren't going to present in the same way. You learn everything. So definitely was feeling the imposter syndrome there, but at the start of grad school, I definitely was feeling it, like, very much so. I would come home from class and go, how am I going to make it through another two years of this? It's overwhelming. Gillian Wilhelm [00:22:15]: You just have so many. You're trying to make friends, you're trying to get. Make sure you're getting everything and finding how to study. And I think working through that, I definitely leaned on my therapist. We talked a lot about that. And just ways to remind yourself you were chosen. This program saw something in you and said, she's great, or, they're great, he's great, she's wonderful, great applicant, but we want to help them become a pa because you can. I definitely. Gillian Wilhelm [00:22:46]: I'm obviously not on the admissions committee, but I kept trying to remind myself, like, they. Jillian, they saw something in you from your application, from your letters of rec, from how you carried yourself in interviews. Like, they saw something in you that said, we want to work with her, we want to help her be a great pa. We want to teach her. And it was constantly, truly reminding myself of that. I had the privilege of being selected, and especially I got into school on my first try, and I know that is not very common to do. So that was also something to just remind myself of. Of like, you were chosen for this. Gillian Wilhelm [00:23:21]: Like, you obviously want it, and you are. You keep showing up even though you feel that imposter syndrome. And that speaks volumes, like, more than you know. And I think that was also my motivation was I keep showing up and I don't have to be perfect, but if I keep showing up, then that's actively kind of fighting that imposter syndrome. Because it would be so much easier to just hide. And you obviously can't skip class, but it would be so much easier to hide and not go to school at all. But I kept having to remind myself of, you are here, you got here, you worked your butt off to get here. So use the opportunity you have to the fullest and to celebrate that and remind yourself like, you've got through the really hard part of getting in now. Gillian Wilhelm [00:24:09]: Continue to do what you have been doing and work hard and show up. Even when you show up and you don't really believe in yourself that day, like still show up, ask your questions and make the most of the experience. Because I only plan on doing this once. So definitely something that if it goes away for you, then that's wonderful. But it continues to be something I work through and I just kind of keep giving myself those reminders of you're still here, you're still showing up. Even when you're scared or nervous or don't really know where to go your first day of clinicals, or don't really feel great after an exam, like, you still showed up and you still gave it your all and that's the best thing you can do is just show up for yourself every day. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:24:50]: And earlier you talked about when you came into the program, you didn't know anyone. And for some people going to graduate school, that is the case. For others, they may know people going in. But for you, as you are transitioning and going through what you've gone through thus far to where you are right now, how did you go about building those relationships with faculty or peers? And were any of those relationships especially impactful? And if so, how were they impactful to you? Gillian Wilhelm [00:25:17]: Yeah, I think for me, I ended up living on in our on campus housing for grad students, which is Riverfront. And I kind of got lucky and had some built in camaraderie and friendships with the other people or classmates in my cohort who also lived in Riverfront. That was something where we move in. Day is the Sunday before classes start on that Monday. So we're of course all kind of cramming in. There was a bunch of us that lived on the same floor and I remember sending like a group or a message in our group text of just like, does anybody want to walk together to class tomorrow morning? And we all walked to class together for our first day of grad school. And it was definitely just nice having those people. It's like you see them in class all day, but then you can come home. Gillian Wilhelm [00:26:02]: And it was like having kind of built in study partners of it was just something nice where we could say like, oh, we have an empty classroom on the second floor, Riverfront, if you want to come and just study in a group, like feel free. And we just built some friendships based on that. I think it's easy to form friendships when you're going through something as challenging as grad school because you're all in it the same way. And it's definitely something challenging maybe for other people. To understand. So that was definitely helpful, is we all were in the same place all the time. We all knew what was going on, and. And we're all kind of helping each other through that, so that definitely helped. Gillian Wilhelm [00:26:40]: And then as, like, my cohort, like, went through and continued onto the program, I think we all definitely just, like, got to know each other more and got to, like, figure out our personalities. And once we got over being completely scared, maybe that first month, like, we just started, like, letting our personalities shine through more, and I think that definitely helps. We have a lot of. A lot of, like, fun and creative personalities in our cohort. And I. It's just a cool mix of people. I definitely would say my best friend, probably in the program is Kate, and she is just wonderful. And I think that was just the combination of. Gillian Wilhelm [00:27:15]: Part of it is we sit next to each other in class. So that was really cool just having someone to, like, chat with. But I don't know, I feel like we got to a point where we just, like, found ourselves hanging out more. And she's just someone I can talk to about anything. And I'm just really grateful to have met her. But truly, everyone in Riverfront, like, I'm, I think, the only student in my cohort who still lives there. We've all kind of spread out, but we still have our Riverfront group chat where we'll, like, chat and see how everyone's doing. So that's been really great just to kind of get to meet people that I probably would have never met otherwise or. Gillian Wilhelm [00:27:47]: And then we're all going to be co workers in the future. So that's really neat. And then with faculty, I definitely think it's like, coming into grad school, you're like, oh, I have to impress my professors. Like, these are also going to be my co workers at some point in the future, which is really cool and also just kind of different to think about, because you think about, like, your professors, and they are a lot of times, like other experts in their field. And unless you're going into that field, it's just different to think about. But I think for me, I was just a person who asked a lot of questions. And I'm also someone who wears her emotions on her face. So if I wasn't getting a topic, it was pretty clear. Gillian Wilhelm [00:28:27]: And I think that kind of helped my professors, too. I know one Professor Raymakers, she taught us more in our summer term. And she's also my academic advisor, so I would talk with her more. And she was someone where she would Be like, I really appreciate that you wear your emotions on your face, because I can see when you're not getting something. And then I suspect other people might not be getting it too. So she knows maybe I need to explain something else differently. And that's also really cool. I think, as well, for faculty. Gillian Wilhelm [00:28:55]: To me, it was just really clear that all of the U of M Flint PA faculty want us to succeed like they do. They ask for so many surveys, and they really ask for our feedback as much as they can. And I think it's pretty clear that they take our feedback seriously because they just want the program to be the best it possibly can, and they want us to be the best, best PA students and then PAs that we can be. So that definitely came through in the interviews. And then just as a student moving through the program and getting to, like, work with all of our different staff and faculty, I just really think it shows that they care. And then for me as well, I. Within the PA program, we have the PA Student Society, or pass, and every cohort has their PASS officer, and we all vote. And the past officers help organize different events and work with faculty for different things. Gillian Wilhelm [00:29:50]: And I was actually elected by my classmates to be the president of my cohort. So I've had the unique privilege to work with faculty and meetings and really be kind of a bridge between students and faculty. And it's been a really unique experience to kind of be a point person for students and have people feel comfortable coming to me and saying, this thing is happening and this is really challenging for us. Could you bring this up to the professors and see what we could do? And I've been able to do that and really be a voice for my classmates, and it's been really cool. So I think I've been. Or I've had the privilege of being able to be that person and then just get to know faculty more throughout that role. And it's just really cool. I think coming into grad school, I didn't really know what to expect with, like, that relationship with your professors, and I'm just really grateful that I have those relationships with them and my. Gillian Wilhelm [00:30:44]: And the cohort does, too. I. I truly do just think it comes across as they care so much and they just want their students to be as successful as they possibly can. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:30:52]: And I think that's really important because whether you're going through a physician assistant program, a medical school program, a law school program, walking into that classroom your first day, it is intimidating. And there will be times in which you will be Scared to speak up and to have your voice heard because of the fact that you don't feel that you have the knowledge to be able to impress the faculty. And one of the things that I would say to you is that you don't have to impress. You're there to learn. And all of your faculty know that. They don't expect you to be experts. They don't expect you to be where they are because they had to go through the same thing that you went through along the way. So it's their role to facilitate that learning and to help you to be able to get to the point of competence. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:31:42]: Competence in the knowledge that you need for the profession or for the academic area, but also the ability for you, to push you and to challenge you and to get you to a point where you are confident in your own abilities to be able to, whether it's in the medical field, to be that advocate it and to be that practitioner that is going to be able to help your, your patients or in some other area where you're working with a computer or you're working with other co workers. So just know that. Know that there is going to be a point in time where you're going to feel that way and that's perfectly fine. But also know that at by the end of the program you will be in a different place. And that's what Jillian is talking about, is you start one place, you'll end at another one. Now Jillian, as you think back to your own graduate school experience and you think of other people that are thinking about graduate school, whether it be going to become a physician assistant or something completely different, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Gillian Wilhelm [00:32:47]: This is such a good question. I think definitely do your research on the programs that you're applying to. Whether like you said, that's PA programs, whether that's for law, whether that's for engineering, do the research and ask the questions for of the admissions teams and try and find programs that match. Maybe your personality is not the best term, but match like who you are, what you want out of a graduate experience. Because if you're going to invest your time, your money and your education into a program and put that in their hands, definitely make sure it's a program that you are sure you would want to attend if an admissions offer was extended to you. That definitely I'm very grateful. I did a lot of research into to my PA programs and I'm grateful I chose to apply to U of M. Flint because I truly do think that their values, as well as their admissions process and speaking to other students, they just really reflected what I wanted out of my graduate program. Gillian Wilhelm [00:33:46]: And I think that's definitely why I chose to apply here. And I have found success as I've gone through. It's not been without its challenges, but I definitely know that the program and I mesh well with like our expectations and what our values are. So that definitely was helpful. So I would say do your research 100% percent. Ask the questions if you have them. All the programs I worked with, their admissions teams were very kind and responding to emails and just answering my questions. So that was wonderful. Gillian Wilhelm [00:34:14]: And I would say as well, if you're considering applying to grad school, remind yourself that it will be challenging at times, like no matter what you do, but just remember that you have the courage to just apply and put yourself out there. And I'm trying to figure out the best way to phrase it, but do it because you're sure you want it and do it only for yourself. Whether it's other people might have expectations for you, but make sure you do it because you want it, and that's what you can see yourself doing. Grad school can be a very challenging process and making sure that it's something you truly want, that's definitely helpful too. And I think that goes into your research. As you can see, maybe this program doesn't necessarily mesh with me or how I think or things. So that definitely, I think, ties back into that and I think just finding success sooner. Just understand too that once you get in or even, even just through the whole admissions process and the application process, just remind yourself it's impossible to compare yourself to other students. Gillian Wilhelm [00:35:14]: Even if you have similar statistics or similar backgrounds in the education or the work that you did to get to that point of applying and working through that process. Comparing yourself, it's never going to help you. It's never really going to give you anything to compare yourself to besides like more nerves or more anxiety. Every applicant is so different. Even, even if you have similar stats, similar grades, similar gpa, everyone is so unique. So it's hard to. I would argue it's kind of impossible to compare yourself to applicants. And then once you're through and once you're in a program, it's hard to compare yourself to other students. Gillian Wilhelm [00:35:54]: Everyone has to take the time to find their own journey and through what works, how best to study, how best to balance your work, your school and your life. Because. Because I know I don't have any children, but I know students with children. That's a whole other area that I could not compare myself to because their process of studying and just managing is so different than mine. So reminding yourself that everyone's journey is so vastly different and comparing yourself is just. While it might be easy to do, or your anxiety might be telling you, or your fear, your nerves, like, oh, just compare. Because it's something. It's like almost something to do. Gillian Wilhelm [00:36:33]: Remind yourself that you are completely unique and independent of everyone else. Even if you're in the same program, no one is going to be the same. And just it might take you more time than others. Like it did with me with, like, finding that balance and finding what study techniques or things work for you, or just reminding that imposter and the imposter feeling inside you like, hey, it's okay. You can still be here, but you're not running the show. So just don't compare yourself to anyone else. Remind yourself you are you and you are wonderful and I know you're working hard. And don't be afraid to find your own journey through grad school. Gillian Wilhelm [00:37:09]: It's okay that it doesn't look like everybody else's. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:37:12]: Well, Jillian, I just want to say thank you for sharing your journey today. Thank you for being here, for the honesty and the openness because it's not always easy to go through graduate school. It's good to put that out there, and it's great to be able to allow for others to be able to learn and grow from your own experience. And I just want to say thank you. I know, I know you've still got a little bit of time left in the program, and that's great. And I'm excited to be able to see what happens next in this clinical part of your education that you're going through. But also as you get ready and you go off into the workforce where you end up, I'm excited about that as well. And I just want to say thank you again and I wish you all the best. Gillian Wilhelm [00:37:50]: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and to share about my experience. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:37:55]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in your continuing your education, whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, Visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at Flintgrad officemflint. Eduardo.
Embracing Detours: Dr. Keith Kelley's Lessons for Grad School Success
Thinking about graduate school? Whether you're a seasoned professional considering a return to academia or a recent grad mapping out your next steps, the latest episode of the Victors in Grad School podcast offers invaluable insights you won't want to miss. Host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Dr. Keith Kelley, Associate Dean and Professor at the University of Michigan-Flint's School of Management, for a candid conversation about the winding, often unexpected paths of graduate education. From his undergraduate days at the University of New Hampshire to his journey through master's and doctoral programs at Florida International University, Dr. Keith Kelley shares stories of setbacks, pivots, perseverance, and growth. Embracing a Nonlinear Path One of the episode's central themes is that the road to and through grad school is rarely straightforward. Dr. Keith Kelley openly discusses his early academic struggles, time spent working and traveling, and how these life experiences led him to find his true academic passions later on. He reminds listeners that it's okay if your journey isn't perfectly mapped out—sometimes, the best opportunities arise from unexpected detours. Humility, Commitment, and Resilience Returning to school after time in the workforce required Dr. Keith Kelley to humble himself and fully commit to being a student again. He emphasizes embracing lifelong learning, asking questions, and being open to growth. When setbacks happen—as they inevitably do—persistence and support networks are key. Dr. Keith Kelley candidly reflects on his own moments of doubt and the friends and mentors who helped him dust himself off and keep moving forward. Balancing Life and Learning Grad school isn't just about academic rigor—it's about balance. Dr. Keith Kelley offers practical advice on time management, scheduling, and leveraging campus resources, from study spaces to mental health services. He stresses the importance of making space for family, friends, and recovery, which ultimately helps mitigate burnout and enhances productivity. The Power of Community and Networking Perhaps the most enduring lesson is the value of building a strong network. The relationships you form with classmates, professors, and colleagues can lead to professional opportunities, mentorship, and vital support throughout your career and personal life. If you're seeking real-world advice—and some entertaining stories—from someone who's walked the walk, be sure to listen to this episode. "Victors in Grad School" delivers the perspective, encouragement, and tools you need to succeed on your own grad school journey. Tune in and start charting your path today! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love that you show up, that you are here trying to prepare yourself for this journey that you're going on. I call it a journey because it is a journey. And for every person thinking about graduate school, it is a journey that you will be on from the very beginning as you're starting to look at programs, through the application process, as you matriculate and enter into the graduate program itself. And through the program, you're going to be learning things, you're going to be adjusting things, and you're going to be figuring things out as you go along. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:53]: This podcast was developed to help you just with that, to be able to provide you with some perspectives, some experiences, some things that you can think about to help you to find success, success in your graduate school journey sooner. That's why every week I love having different people with different experiences that can share their own journey with you. And today we've got another great guest. Dr. Keith Kelley is with us today. And Dr. Kelly is a professor of professor in the School of Management at the University of Michigan, Flint. And he's also the Associate Dean of the School of Management at the University of Michigan, Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:31]: So I'm really excited to be able to talk to him and to be able to have him share some of his own experiences and introduce him to you as well. Keith, thanks so much for being here. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:01:41]: Absolutely. Thank you very much for having me. And I can't wait to share my experiences and hopefully people can relate to that and maybe learn a little something about my journey and similarities and, of course, lessons that I've learned along the way. Thanks for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:52]: Well, I really appreciate you being here. And I know that you did your bachelor's degree at UNH, at UNH Peter Paul College of Business and Economics. You got a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration in International Affairs. And then you went went off, you went off, you got some experiences, you started using that bachelor's degree to do some different things out in the world. But at some point, at some point, you made a decision, you made a decision that you were not done, that you wanted to continue your education. Bring me back to that point and what was going through your head. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:02:24]: Well, let me go back just about the education part, which you were just referring to. So I actually got my degree from the Whittemore School of Business and Economics renamed. So the name that you gave there. These schools change in name over time. Unh and UNH is my home state. But that's not. What I'm trying. Trying to say here is that I actually started out at Bentley College, which is now a university in Waltham, Mass. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:02:45]: And probably a lot of people can relate to this is that I didn't do well when I started out. I went to a business school. I basically applied to three schools. I got into all of them. Bentley was my kind of second school, which is a good school, but I couldn't really afford the one that I really wanted to go to, which is Babson. And so when I started out there, I didn't really do particularly well. And after a few years I was like, well, wait a minute, let's pause on this, on my education. And I was kind of lucky in the sense that I took a moment to just kind of explore what was the purpose of me getting an education. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:03:14]: And then I did a little introspection, a little traveling, and then I ended up in Costa Rica and Venezuela for quite some time. And that's how I came back to the degrees that you mentioned with business and international affairs. This is right about the time when Hugo Chavez had come to power in Venezuela. And I was experiencing, you know, this in real time, what can happen with countries. And so I came back and I was like, okay, well this is something that I'm interested in studying. And then I was fortunate to have support of my grandparents who were. Their alma mater was Unh. And so I got my education there, finished my degrees and. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:03:43]: And then I was working in a cubicle in a tech company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Going in at night and going in during the day and it was dark and coming out at night and it was dark. And I was like, is this what my life is going to be like? And at this point I had quite a bit of experience with Latin America. I'm going to South Florida, I'm going to Miami. And so I kind of pursued my career down there and. And then I ended up in working for a number of years like many people do before they go into grad school and, you know, getting to the point where maybe my career is stagnating a little bit, and ended up going back to grad school not for the purposes of just going to get my education, but education is a very non nonlinear process for some of us. And so I never thought that it was going to end up where I am today. But like any great story of grad school, it begins with a man or a woman. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:04:23]: So I had a girlfriend at the time who was interested in a program at my next alma mater, Florida International University, and she was going back to a music program there. And I said, well, it's time for me to go back to grad school. And they had a great international business program there. So I was like, let me go and join some of their international business programs. It was the best decision I ever made. And so I ended up doing my master's in international business there because there was a real passion with Latin America, and I was really excited about that. And I ended up basically meeting a whole bunch of different cultures and people, and my network there was just fantastic. So I would certainly say that that's one of the best experiences that I had that was unexpected about graduate school. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:04:59]: And then towards the end of that, this was right around 2007 and 2008, when I was going to grad school, one of the professors there was talking to me about going on and doing my doctorate. And I had never considered that before in my life. And we're heading into a little bit of a recession. I was like, well, maybe this is a sign that this is something that I want to do, because it's really passionate about learning and education and all of these things with business and affairs. And so I ended up down in Miami, nonlinear path, Coming out of the University of New Hampshire, but starting in another college, not doing well, and kind of transitioning myself into various different ways. And that's how I ended up in grad school. Great decision, great network of people. And that's how I got into pursuing my doctorate as well. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:05:35]: Just a lot of things happen by chance. So I would say that my. My opportunities presented themselves, for sure, but none of them were precisely planned out. So say that I could probably relate to a lot of people, but not necessarily 100% sure what they're going for in life. And we always have to pivot and make adjustments. And, you know, education has really paid off for me. It's been one of the best, best tools that I've had for kind of advancing my life and getting to where I am today. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:59]: You talked just a second ago about all these transitions. And every person that goes through graduate school has to go through a number of transitions. You go through a transition from for yourself, going and getting a bachelor's degree to transitioning out of education into the workforce. Figuring what that was like. Then as you move down to Miami and you figure out, I'm going to go back to school, then it's transitioning back into school, into now a graduate degree. And even going from a master's degree into a doctorate degree is a transition. As you look at and you think about the transitions that you went through from bachelor's to master's to doctorate degrees, what are some of the things that you had to do to be at the very beginning to be able to set yourself up for success? And what are some things that you had to do as you were going through the programs to maintain and continue that success to the very end? Dr. Keith Kelley [00:06:48]: Yeah, well, let's say it's especially at the, you know, going back to school after spending a number of years just working professionally, you have to make the adjustment of committing to school, committing to education, and humble yourself a little bit as well. So I think that I humbled myself a great deal going into the doctoral programs. But, you know, coming back to graduate school for my master's degree, you really have to commit to your education. And so I think that, as I mentioned, I was pursuing a little bit of an interest in some of the subject matter for international business, and I hadn't really fully committed to the university of the school, but once I started out, I realized, realized that it was really something I had a huge passion for and working with the students that I was in my cohort with, going back to school and making sure that I embraced the work with. With others and making sure that I fully committed to doing the work that I had for my instructors and. And really taking advantage of the fact that there's a great deal of opportunity for me to learn and to benefit from opportunities within the graduate school as well. And it's a different environment as, as many people realize. And so as I've transitioned into education now, I realize this. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:07:47]: A lot of people who are working professionals, their cup is pretty full with a professional experience. And so they come in, especially in the school of management, with our, you know, kind of business focus. They come in and they have a great deal of experience, they're leaders in their fields. And you have to humber yourself a little bit in the sense that you're kind of going back to school to learn how to do something a little bit differently, learn how to think critically and learn how to develop new pathways for doing things. And so it's tough sometimes when you've been out there and you're having a little bit of success to come back and Say, okay, well, I'm no longer the master, I'm the student. It's a really important lesson for you, both with the instructor and also with your colleagues, is they all have different ways of doing things. They work for different companies, they work for different organizations, and so they're bringing their expertise, and you really need to have an opportunity to listen to what they have to say and how they do things. Because I think that that's one of the best parts about education. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:08:31]: You're always listening. You find things unexpectedly, like our journeys. We find things, little nuggets of information, little ways that you never thought about doing something. And then all of a sudden you're. You're onto something really spectacular. And so humbling yourself and going back to education, fully committing yourself is really important. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:47]: You know, it is really important and definitely something that you're going to have to do. As you said, humble yourself and know that you're going to potentially make some mistakes along the way. And you might fall, you might trip, but you have to dust yourself off and be resilient along the way as well. Talk to me about a moment, a moment in your doctorate or your master's degree where you ran up against that wall where you struggled and you had to dust yourself off and pick yourself back up. And how did you do that? Dr. Keith Kelley [00:09:15]: Some great examples of this, my colleagues in my doctoral program, in the doctoral program in particular, is an interesting one because really, it's a really different animal than even your master's degrees. And so going back into that area, I hadn't done a great deal with statistics, and I hadn't seen a lot of, you know, just basic classwork things. And I recall that just annotations, mathematical statistical annotations such as X bar, you know, what is, what is X bar? My friends laugh at me in this moment. What is X bar? And it just basically means the mean, the average of something, right? And I'm looking at the statistics and they, some of them are professional students and they don't really. They don't really recognize the fact that if you're not into this field for quite some time, even though you understand the principles of physics, you're not necessarily understanding some of the notations. And so, you know, in some of the, the quizzes, I'm confused by some of the. Just the basics of how we mark things down, what they represent, which is comical. And another instance in my doctoral program in particular, which is kind of surprising, writing a paper for an international business class. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:10:08]: And, you know, I thought that I was doing Particularly well in my paper. And I was just, just expanding on many different thoughts and chasing down all kinds of different ideas and jumping down every rabbit hole that I could find, which was not how you do quality research, which I came to find out. And this was really my first year and being in the doctoral program and really kind of an eye opening experience for me. It's a different type of writing, different style of writing, and a different commitment to precision and scientific process and research. And so the guy that gave me, I think, a B plus or something like that, which is not really a great grade for your doctoral studies, you know, basically, you know, kind of a wake up call for me. And he was the guy who ended up recruiting me into the program. So I think it was doubly disappointing for him and me and the mark of shame. And so I, you know, I humbled myself again. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:10:52]: I said, okay, Keith, what went wrong? Why didn't you do this? Well, and, and kind of learned from that lesson. And I've gone on to have a great deal of success in that, that area. My writing style has improved. I've never, never been shy about saying that I'm not a doctor in English, but you have to do a great deal of writing and, and work on your writing style even, and the idea of doing quality research and being prec. Things that you say and how you represent, Measure things. So I think those are two great experiences. And it's a, it's an arduous process going through. This is, it takes a lot of time. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:11:21]: And you know, a great story about that is that I, when I was being somewhat recruited into the doctoral program from the, the master's degree, the guy, you know, he recognized that I was pretty sharp guy. But you know, it's difficult to tell some of the things that are needed for success in your doctoral programs. But I remember him walking me into the office of the, the chair of the department and asking if I was married and, you know, talking about my lifestyle. And he's suggesting that I might not be married after I finished my doctoral. It's a, it's a large commitment and so very taxing on your life and, and a very unique experience. And so a lot of those moments will pop up along the way. And I think a lot of people don't realize that as part of their educational process is that you're going to have moments when you're down, you want to give up. And it's not just about your intelligence, it's not just about success any one particular semester. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:12:05]: It's you know, the journey is a long one. It often requires that you have help along the way. I had some great friends in all of my studies, both master doctoral level studies, great supporters. And so look for support along the way because I think that's a, you know, a vital aspect of this is that you will have your ups and downs. You have those moments where you feel like you've been pushed down the stairs. And if you have your family around you, you have your colleagues around you, and you have great professors and mentors and some of that is spended on your forming relationships with these people that will help you out. And it's the, the education is one element of it, but there's also a degree component of it too. So there's a lot of people that don't end up finishing their doctoral degree because they can't get through the entirety of the process of both their courses and their dissertation in same thing with a lot of degrees, you can get your education without having a degree. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:12:49]: And the degree is certainly worthwhile, I would say, in terms of the views of employers. So it's also probably a little bit of a black mark. If you started a program and you didn't finish it, what does that say about your employment prospects if you're looking for a job? So bear those things in mind is finishing and having the requisite support groups around you is really important. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:06]: Talking about those supports. When you're going through graduate school, you have to balance a lot. You've got to wear a lot of hats. You've got to figure out what that balance is, whether you are working, you have a family, you have other responsibilities or commitments. Talk to me about how did you balance school, work, family, other responsibilities that you had while you were going through graduate school? Dr. Keith Kelley [00:13:27]: Boy, yeah, that's a tough one. You have to find your time. A lot of the people that we work with here, students in the University of Michigan Flint and School of Management, are working and family oriented. And you know, they have tough schedules. So I think a lot of that is just a bit of scheduling. So, you know, I think the things that we do with our students here is that we try to give them a routine, we try to give them predictable schedules. And as a student going through this experience, I think that's what you look for. You look for, when are the deadlines, when do I need to heavily commit myself, when is it going to be taxing on my family or take me away. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:13:58]: And I think that's true for just about anything that I do these days. Is That I just have to plan, you know, I have to see what's out there, look at the classes, when are things due? When is that going to really tax my schedule? And then as I'm doing right now, for instance, during the summertime, where things have lightened up a little bit, I'm like, well, I'm going to maximize my opportunities with my family. Family, or maximize my opportunities with my friends. And then I know when we come back to school, for instance, in the. In the fall, you know, things are going to ramp up and my time commitments are going to be much more heavy on the school and the focus that I have as an associate dean. The same thing was going through graduate school. You just have to look out ahead and say, okay, well, this is where I lose my family. You know, these are the moments where basically you guys are going to have to support me and know that I'm just going to go into my room or I'm going to go and do something, and you guys are going to have to find your own activities. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:14:43]: And maybe even some of that would be, you know, kind of an idea that you have too, is that right now I help with planning for my family and say, finding activities for them to do, knowing that I can't join them. And so that's a little bit of what I did then, too, is like, well, you guys can have fun. I'm not going to be there, but here's some fun for you to have. And. And I hope you guys enjoy yourselves and that you're not just, you know, waiting in another room for me. But I think that's a key element. Find out when things are due, plan your schedule around that, and try to maximize the opportunities that you do have time, because that's going to make the rest of the time a little bit easier as well, is that if you're not losing out on moments of your life when you have the. So if you have a moment, you have a day, you have a couple of days where you can do stuff with your family that you absolutely do, that you do that with your friends. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:15:21]: And, you know, mental health is a key element of this, too, as you learn as an adult and you go along, you know, building in times where you can recover so that you're more productive in the times when you're working heavily and focusing on your career potentially. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:34]: And every person at times can be frustrated, they can be challenged, they can go through a process of, I'm going to call it burnout, where they are pushing and pushing and pushing, and they are trying to achieve and they're achieving, but. But then they hit that, as I said earlier, that wall. How did you avoid burnout or recover from it if you ever hit that burnout phase in your own graduate school experience? Dr. Keith Kelley [00:15:56]: Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of these moments where I envision myself in the future and I see myself days or weeks away and knowing that there's going to come a moment in time and for those of us that have gone through a great deal of education or done a lot of this accomplishments, you know that in the future there'll come a day where you'll just be able to wake up in the morning and you won't have anything to do. Pre plan, mind you, you could have things that you want to do. But I think visioning and envisioning these, these kind of future moments of times when you know it'll all be over for a brief moment in time where this too shall pass. This is a tough moment, but I think a lot of it has to do with just being open and honest and communicating with people that may be causing you pressure for burnout and saying. And that includes yourself taking moments and saying, okay, look, right Now I'm operating at 50 productivity and the best thing that I could possibly do is just stop for a couple of moments and the world will keep spinning. I think a lot of us believe that we're so central to everything that we do that we can't stop doing whatever it is that we're doing for a moment in time and recover. And that's not true. It's oftentimes not the case at all. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:16:55]: You can, you know, have people wait a few days and they'll be forgiving. And you know, this is something you just have to build into your schedule to say, okay, well I'm going to recover. And if you don't do that, then you will burn out. So I think that the lesson there is trying to avoid the burnout out. And when you get to that point where you're starting to feel it, and oftentimes it's indicated by mistakes, simple mistakes, then it's time to say, okay, well, I need a vacation. You talk with people about that. Look, I'm fatigued, I'm burning out. And just try to figure out what is the things that you absolutely need to do and to make some time for yourself and then figure out what it is that you, you like to do to recover. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:17:26]: So what is it that's going to make you recover? So I think those are key elements that help me along the way. And again, if you surround yourself with people that are familiar with the process and that are supportive, then that's going to help you out a great. Because when those times come and they will, they'll be ready to support you and they'll, they'll understand. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:43]: Every person has to identify and look on their own campus to find the things that will help them to be successful. Whether it's a faculty member, a specific office, a special place where they're studying, whatever it might be. Were there any campus resources or campus things that you had to rely on that and it could be organizations or resources or more that helped you in supporting your overall success? Dr. Keith Kelley [00:18:09]: Well, we, I think we had, when I was at Florida International University in grad school and both levels, I think we had a lot of spaces where we could collaborate. They were, you know, somewhat relaxed. And so I know that they had a Starbucks in the first floor of the library. So right as you walked in, you were, you know, walking past places where you could get caffeinated. And it was like an oasis in the middle of the university. And so, you know, we would go in there for quiet times and studying and we could find floors where we could study. And they had lots of resources versus books and databases and all kinds of things in there where, you know, I could, I could get help. And then from the perspective of what sport I had at Florida International when I was in the, in the College of Business, I think that was the other thing is that they provided a few opportunities for us to just. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:18:50]: We were hovering around the College of Business frequently interacting with professors and just, you know, we were just there. And whenever we needed a hand with something, we wanted to talk, the people were there. And so I would say if you provide spaces and find those spaces for you to make that work, that's a great opportunity for you to just have help when you need it. And again, you know, I keep coming back to this element of networks and friends. A lot of people that I went to school with became, you know, really good friends of mine. And so my safe space and my support group was also the people that I went to school. If I needed a hand with something, if I had a lot of friends, chances are somebody among those friends knew how to solve a problem that I didn't know how to solve or could help me. And just some cases, just the mental support of just working on a problem together. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:19:36]: If they're around and they're, you know, you, you nurture those relationships, they take of care of you as well. So you know, there was the library, of course. We have an excellent library at the University of Michigan, Flint. You know, it's beautiful, you know, and those are places that I would oftentimes go in because there are places where you could focus and study and find different levels and areas that you could find the things that you need. And they also are places that can help you find the precise resources that you need. I think a lot of us tread water sometimes looking for things and using those resources. The library, for instance, they know how to find things that you may not know are like easier ways to do things or better information and so on and so forth. So I think those are the key elements of success is I didn't end up using a lot of the counseling and psychological services. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:20:15]: I used my friends and my colleagues for that purposes, but they're there as well. So I would just say find your space, your college is your home. Find some sort of mentor that you're working with. You know, we all have mentors that we, we have with, with our faculty and find your network of friends and colleagues that you work well with and can support you. And they can also direct you to campus resources as well. We offer a ton of support here at the University of Michigan, Flint. I would think that those opportunities are out there for people to exploit and a lot of times they don't, but they should. So, you know, for my studies, I realized that that that is a huge time saving component of doing any of your work is leveraging the resources that universities provide. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:20:52]: We provide them for a reason. Right. So there's a reason why they're there. And sometimes we don't capitalize as much as we can. And certainly in my journeys, I would say I probably learned that lesson along the way. So I would encourage everybody to learn that quicker than I did. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:04]: It definitely is a learning process and you have to kind of get those bumps and bruises along the way to be able to come out out unscathed in the end. But hopefully by listening and learning from people like you and the experience that you've had, you can avoid some of those as well. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:21:21]: Yeah, absolutely. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:21]: Going through a program like a business program, there may have been opportunities to be able to get that real world experience you talked about, the opportunities to be able to connect with people from all over the place with lots of different backgrounds. And that's one of the benefits of going through graduate school. Talk to me about those interactions and how those helped you to become who you are, are today. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:21:42]: Yeah, I mean, I have some wonderful stories about that. So, you know, one of the first opportunities that I had with a kind of a internship consulting experience with my grad school is that a lot of people may not know this, but I went as part of a supply chain class and worked for what we called, I think at the time, the Drive 25 for Spirit Airlines. And so the airline formerly known as Spirit that has gone by the wayside, and this was back in 2007, 2008, and we did a project where we went from Miami, I think we flew out of the Fort Lauderdale airport up to Orlando, where they had a central hub, and we wanted to look for their operations. And so what Spirit Airlines does is they. They make their money, or they did. They make their money from basically keeping the planes in the air as fast as you possibly can. And so one of the first things that we noticed is that everything was being reimbursed for them at the company, but they wanted us to, I guess, pay for check on checked luggage. And so what you ended up seeing, and this was a very unique thing. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:22:36]: A lot of people that are looking at this probably don't have any work world other than paying for all of your luggage all over the place for the lower fare aircraft and airlines. And so when we did this, the first thing that we do is we don't. We had small bags. We're just hopping up to Orlando to do some consulting work on their operations. We'll just take them onto the airplane. And so as soon as you get into the terminal in the gate, you see some of the problem that's occurring. And this is basically, it takes them an hour to an hour and a half to get people on and off the airplane, which is not something which is good for economy carriers. And so this is consulting work where we're looking at how fast they load their gas. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:23:07]: Gas and check their safety and all kinds of stuff. But the thing that is readily apparent is they have a policy of basically charging for checked bags, which forces people to want to bring them onto the aircraft, which means that everybody's got. Every time I tell the story, it gets larger and larger that the people have got goats and chickens that they're bringing onto the. Onto the plane because they don't want to check any of the things they have. And they've just got so much stuff that it's taking forever. And this is like an. You know, I keep talking about this experience because, you know, you see the policies that Spirit put into place and other airlines have put into place and whether or not they worked and they didn't work, but we did consulting work for airlines and working tightly with my colleagues, working with catering experiences and understanding, like, you know, culture and. And later on in my doctoral studies, I did work for Service Employees International Union. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:23:50]: And, you know, we had financial crisis in some of the larger healthcare systems in Miami. And there's lots of benefits that come from that. Both you learning about how various operations work, but also getting experience and to working with colleagues and how they work and how they operate and learning how to basically improve the way that you interact with a lot of other people. So I think that's a key area that you should capitalize on whenever you're going to grad school, is take advantage of the opportunities and the connections that a lot of the universities have with organizations for real world learning experiences. The thing that I love about teaching in the graduate programs is all of the stories, every problem that comes up, especially in management, when we're talking in a classroom of what somebody themselves is going through from a personally challenging experience with their organization, their business, and then trying to solve that in a way that's readily translated into the class subject matter. So this is an excellent opportunity to get lots of perspectives with a lot of people going through similar challenges as you. And the only thing that you really, you know, make sure that you're aware of, you're not taking advantage of internships and things of that nature, as I mentioned, and take advantage of the opportunity to voice your concerns, voice your challenges with your organization, and speak in class, because these are bits of information that are worthy of conversation and solutions. So speak up. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:25:01]: And this will be an excellent opportunity for you to learn and also teach. So there's a lot of teaching that goes on. A lot of the teaching that goes on at the graduate level in particular comes from the students themselves and the classmates that you have. What do they do in this situation? What challenges are they having? And you get together and you form strong groups of solving challenges and problems. So internships are great. You can find some strange ones along the way. And you find yourself in a strange moment in history with Spirit Airlines, as I did. And I never thought at the time that I would have all these great stories about Spirit Airlines. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:25:27]: And there they were because of where I was in the world, their geographic location, some of their hubs, but also some of the policies that they put in place. And the aftermath of that. And they still never really got a hold of their operations, but some of their policies, they either had to stop covering the. The prices for checking their bags or they had to charge for bringing things on the plane. And we know which one they chose in that one. They chose for charging for your carry on bags so that people would limit the amount of stuff they brought onto the plane so they could basically bring in the aircraft and they could push the aircraft back and essentially it was 40 minutes in order to be profitable. So they actually did that fairly well. But they, they still had some issues with canceling their flights and a whole bunch of other stuff which is interesting to see. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:26:04]: I think that's an excellent part about being in grad school too, is that a lot of professionals are working at moments in time in history with their organizations that are interesting. I've gone through so many experiences here where, where people are dealing with wage compression and Covid and had personal issues with the Flint water crisis here. And you know, many years ago we've had all these challenges within organizations that we've gone through together and we've all talked about. And that's an excellent opportunity for you to kind of vet your experiences, share your experiences, get feedback and we all power through together. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:33]: Now, as you think back to your graduate school experiences, what's one thing that you wish someone had told you before you started? Dr. Keith Kelley [00:26:40]: I would say going back and just building on the networking capital, taking more opportunities of that. I think that I had a great situation where things naturally evolved, where I kind of have a network of people that emerged out of the graduate programs and I seem seemingly was lucky. So in reflection, I would say I was probably more lucky in that regard that if I had gone back in time and, and somebody told me, well Keith, you really need to focus on your network. This is right about the time that Facebook is coming along and you know, LinkedIn, I don't know that that had been heard of when I went to my first graduate program. A lot of these things that we recognize now as being part of how we operate, building in good relationships and making sure that you nurture those relationships and you don't take them for granted. When you have opportunities to meet people from all, all over the organizational spectrum and really develop these relationships that carry on to the future. Now it doesn't really affect me too much in the sense that I've kind of gone into academia and most of my colleagues from this period of time outside of the doctoral program have gone into, you know, they developed themselves professionally and they're working for large real estate companies or they're doing agency work for soccer organizations or whatever it happens to be. But had I gone and developed some of These relationships a little bit better, you could capitalize on them from a number of different perspectives. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:27:52]: So I think that's the key, is that the education is good for the actual lessons that you have in your class. But especially at the graduate level, I would say that your opportunities to share experiences and to build up your network so that you can reach out to people in the future that may have jobs or that you may want to hire. In addition to that, just the overall reaching out for mentorship and mental support, I think that matters a great deal too, is that if you build up your network, there a lot of people that you can reach out to are people that you just talk about a problem and they don't have to solve it for you, but they've been there before and they can hear you. And so I think that also helps with avoiding burnout and mental fatigue. And as you go up, you know what? A lot of us go to graduate school because we're trying to rise up in organizations and take more responsibility. And a lot of us that get into these roles of more responsibility realize that having good colleagues and friends that you can just talk with every once in a while, building mentor relationships, you know, that can be cross mentor relationships will help you through some tough times, times. And the more people that you have like that, the better they can provide resources. But the most important resource of all is probably just their time and being able to listen and talk through a problem and sometimes just unwind about a problem from a professional perspective or from a friend perspective. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:29:01]: So I wish that I had nurtured some of my relationships a little bit better so I'd have more of those people. I was lucky. But if I had been more deliberate my efforts and more calculating, I probably could have a lot more friends across the spectrum of organizations all over the world that are those sorts of friends. Not. Not just the Facebook acquaintances or just somebody that I just went to school with and I casually know, but good friends, people that you talk with frequently. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:29:23]: And finally, as you look back at your graduate school experiences, what are some additional tips outside of what you've already said, that you might offer others considering graduate education, whether it's in business or some other area that would help them find success sooner. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:29:37]: Yeah. So I think that key element is trying to figure out what exactly are you going to school for and what is your end game. I feel like that's one thing that in my life, I haven't done as well. Well, the things that I've accomplished, I feel at some level have kind of Found me. And I know those things are kind of interlaced with your background and your, your work and your efforts and whatnot. But I would say making sure that you do your research, you find out about each program, what's it going to be like? You know, what are all the resources you indicated? There's all these resources that universities provide and programs provide, and there's multiple elements associated with going through a graduate program in terms of the time of the class and, you know, the cost of any program. That's a, that's another. When can I finish? How often are classes, classes offered? A lot of us want to go to school and we're not considering all the little elements associated with the value of education. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:30:23]: And value, as you mentioned earlier, is like, well, how do you balance going to school with your commitments to your family and your friends and other things? So some of those things are important as well. So the value that your education can provide is providing you with a, you know, kind of a structured system in which case you can plan for those opportunities to be with your family and take advantage of opportunities that you have. And that's kind of hidden balance value, scholarship. And I'm coming from a background of, you know, the school of management and a business person. So everything I look at is return on investment, you know, what do you want out of your education? Can this education provide that? And what are all the hidden costs associated with education? And some of that is just not being consistent with scheduling and not providing flexibility and not providing a lot of things that also people are balancing when they're going back to grad school in particular, you know, so it's not as though our undergraduates don't have oftentimes jobs or families they're committed to and other things, but in grad school, typically you're going to school school and you're already in the, the midst of a full career and a family and other things, then you need to really balance those things as well. So planning and investigating, you know, asking all kinds of questions, you know, ask more questions than you think you should. So if you go to an event and people are not asking questions, ask questions. If you go to an event and people are asking questions, ask questions. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:31:34]: And if you feel like you've already asked a question, we'll ask another one. And so don't be afraid to ask as many questions as you feel necessary to get the answer that you want, want about what your experience will be like. And you never really know, of course, but we're looking for some level of predictability in terms of our return on investment and you know, what sorts of resources are you going to get for supporting you along that journey and how does that fit with your life? And so just say those are things that I would definitely encourage people to do. Do a lot more planning than I did. I think in some of my educational journey, a lot more investigation, I think that pays off a great deal. So don't have analysis paralysis as they say. Don't wait forever in order to make your decision because there's always going to be challenges and always going to be some issues. Issue is associated with any degree or education or any other thing that you do in life. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:32:17]: That's imperfect. But do your due diligence beforehand and doing a proper investigation and figure out what suits you as best as you can and what you're trying to get at, what's your purpose in your education? So I think that that's a key element why exactly you're going back to school, what do you want? And then you know, you talk about those things with the people that can help you along the way. Because if you're trying to get a promotion at your current job, you're trying to switch your careers, most of the people that are supporting you are not calling up your boss or you know, they're not trying to out your plans, but they can help you and say, okay, well focus on these things that can get you where you want to be and everybody's here to help you. And that's the point of a lot of this education is we're here to help. And I guess I don't realize that sometimes when I went through my education is that you think it's just very one way street. But a lot of people are there to help you and interactions that you have with them is very beneficial. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:33:03]: Thank you for being here today. Thank you for sharing your own journey and for helping others to be able to maneuver through their journey through what you've experienced. And I truly wish you all the best. Dr. Keith Kelley [00:33:14]: Thank you so much for having me and I wish everyone who is listening the best in their own educational journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:33:19]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in continuing your education, whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint Eduardo graduate Programs to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at Flintgrad officemflint. Eduardo.
From Athlete to Academic: Roy Shavers' Playbook for Grad School Success
In the latest episode of the Victors in Grad School podcast, Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Roy Shavers, an Academic Success Specialist at the University of Michigan-Flint, for an inspiring conversation about the transformational journey of graduate education. This episode is packed with relatable advice, honest reflections, and the kind of encouragement every current and prospective grad student needs to hear. The Power of Mindset and Determination A core theme throughout the episode is the importance of mindset. Roy Shavers speaks candidly about being a first-generation college student and not growing up seeing college degrees on the wall. Despite academic challenges in his early years and a less-than-stellar ACT score, he was determined not to give up. His athletic background taught him to view every obstacle as something to overcome, treating academics like a competition he was determined to win. This athlete mentality—balancing, persevering, and pushing through adversity—became his blueprint for success in and out of the classroom. Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Imposter syndrome is real, as discussed by Dr. Christopher Lewis at 07:10. Roy Shavers admits to feeling intimidated, especially when surrounded by master's and doctoral students early in his grad school journey. His way of overcoming these feelings? Embracing the challenge, believing in himself, and leaning into the skills that made him successful as a student athlete—perseverance, focus, and the relentless pursuit of personal growth. His story is a valuable reminder that self-doubt is natural, but it can be beaten with the right mindset and support. Mentorship, Balance, and Lifelong Learning Another theme from Roy Shavers's journey is the value of mentorship and networking. He credits supportive professors and mentors who pushed him to believe in himself and helped him navigate graduate school transitions. He also encourages listeners to reach out, ask questions, and not hesitate to contact the authors of interesting articles for real-world insights and career networking (19:55). Balancing school, work, and life responsibilities is tough, but, as Roy Shavers shares (20:36), drawing from past experiences and making time for self-organization can make the impossible possible. Advice for Future Victors If you're thinking about graduate school, Roy Shavers suggests finding a mentor, having patience, setting a plan, and staying resilient. Remember, everyone's path is different, and sometimes the best advice comes from those who've overcome the challenges themselves. Tune in to this episode to hear Roy Shavers's full journey—including how persistence, the right support system, and a lifelong love of learning can make you a victor in grad school. Listen now and take your first step towards becoming the person you want to be! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. You know, as always, I love that you show up every week to be able to learn just a little bit more and to be able to push yourself and help yourself, to be able to work toward those goals that you've set for yourself that are helping you to be able to be the person you want to become. And that's all about you going to graduate school. This podcast is here to help you along this journey. I call it a journey because it is a journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:47]: Every individual that goes on to graduate school goes on a personal journey themselves that are helping them to. To be able to attain the goals that they've set and are pushing themselves forward. So every week, I love that you show up to be able to learn something just a little bit more, that are going to put some tools in your toolbox and help you to be able to do just that. Every week, I bring you different guests with different experiences, people that have gone to graduate school before you that can give you some hints, some tips, some things that they've learned along the way, whether good or maybe not so good, that they can help you to be able to maneuver through that journey just a little bit better. And today we got another great guest. Roy Shavers is with us, and Roy is an academic success specialist at the University of Michigan, Flint. I work with him closely in a number of different ways at the university, and he's had his own graduate school journey, and he's actually still working in a graduate school journey. We're going to be talking about that journey that he's been on and some of the things that he's learned along the way. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:53]: And I'm really excited to have him here. Roy, thanks so much for being here today. Roy Shavers [00:01:56]: Appreciate it. Glad to be here. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:59]: Well, I'm really excited to have you here. And, you know, I always start these conversations with an opportunity to kind of turn the clock back in time. And I want to go back because I know you did your undergraduate work at Eastern Michigan University, and as you were going through that experience for yourself, there was a point in time, there was an instance that made you say to yourself, I'm not done. I want to continue and I want to get a graduate degree. Bring me back to that point. And what was Going through your head. Roy Shavers [00:02:28]: Well, I knew I was going to college, but I didn't grow up seeing degrees on the wall. I talk about this all the time to a lot of the people that I come close to. But my parents, I'm a first gen college student. My parents didn't graduate from a college. My mom went to cosmetology school. My dad was drove public transportation. So my big thing was I wanted to compete on the Division 1 level. Back then I thought I was a basketball player, but my calling was track and field. Roy Shavers [00:03:01]: That's how I got to Eastern Michigan, was through track and field. I reassured it my first year because of grades. Grades and ACT score. My ACT score wasn't that strong. It was, it was pretty bad. But I didn't give up. I had this mentality that I knew that I was going to college. But like I said, I reassured my first year. Roy Shavers [00:03:21]: That put me in a place where I gained a year back. So I graduated within the four years. And my academic advisor at the time was like, what are you going to do? Are you going to go get a second bachelor's or you going to go to grad school? And the young lady that I was dating at the time, I was telling her, I'm going to go get a second bachelor's. You know, like, I, I don't want no graduate degree. And she was telling me like, Roy, that wouldn't make sense. Challenge yourself, put something in front of you that you can, you know, look forward to. So I don't know, I sat back and I thought about it and I said, what's the coolest job that I didn't see somebody doing on a college campus? And they, I thought an academic advisor. I'm like, they talk to students not just about classes, but just about life. Roy Shavers [00:04:06]: I can think back to the guy that was my advisor at the time. And I just talked recently talked to him about a couple of months ago. We talked about everything, current events and all of that stuff. And when she asked me what I wanted to do, my other advisor, I said, I'm going for student affairs, you know, higher education. So I pursued a degree in educational leadership with a student affairs focus. And originally my goal was to work with student athletes. I wanted to work with student athletes. But it started off good. Roy Shavers [00:04:37]: But I got pulled into the student affairs, the higher education enrollment management part of higher education. So this is where I'm at. You know, I've been doing this for the last 10 years working on a college campus. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:53]: And you decided to go to Eastern Michigan University for your master's degree. And you. There are a number of different higher education programs that are out there. Bring me into your mindset of choosing a graduate program for yourself, especially for that first one. I know you've gone beyond that, and we'll talk about that. That too. But for the master's degree that you got, what made you decide that Eastern Michigan University was the right fit for you? Roy Shavers [00:05:16]: Well, I was a student athlete. I went there for my undergrad, and I had to pick whether it's a second bachelor's because I graduated, or I had to pick a graduate degree program. And the advisors there at the time, they made their job seem so cool. So that's why I picked student affairs. Higher education, Educational leadership. Student affairs. That was my focus because I, you know, I wanted to do something that fun on the college campus. I thought being an advisor was fun or running some type of program would. Roy Shavers [00:05:47]: Would, you know, I could see myself doing. So that's when I picked that program. Now, when I got into the program, I don't know if I'm going a little bit deep, but when I got actually into the program, I was, like, scared, because it wasn't just students that was working on a master's. It was students that was working on PhDs that I was. That I was in, you know, classes with. They had to take the same classes that I had to get to get to their goal, you know, which is earning a doctoral degree. So I don't know, being in all some of those classes, I was intimidated because it was like, can't write on this level. I can't. Roy Shavers [00:06:24]: I never even saw myself even being in that space. But I knew, like I said, the mindset that I had once I got to college, oh, I was determined to not give up, and I was gonna pass. Everything that was put in in front of me, I was passing. So that was the mentality that I had. You know, when I started that program at. It was times that I wanted to give up. And it was professors that came into my life that wouldn't let me give up. Like, one of them was Dr. Roy Shavers [00:06:50]: Zamani Gallagher, who always was positive with me, you know, always told me the reason I make. Kept it in my mind the goal. What's the end goal, Roy? And then Another lady was Dr. Tack. She had pushed me when it came to writing. So, I don't know, I built. They helped me build my confidence. When I first started that program, you Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:10]: know, that empowerment imposter syndrome is real, and it's something that every student I think is challenged by as they go through. And as a first generation graduate student, that's definitely something that you don't have other people to turn to outside of people that you meet on campus that might already have a graduate degree, like you said, that are pushing you in different ways. Talk to me about that imposter syndrome. What did you have to do to specifically push yourself past that and get to a point where you were confident in your own abilities to be able to be successful in that journey? Roy Shavers [00:07:40]: I more so just believed in myself, but I, I always looked at every opportunity as is. I looked at it as sports. I don't know, I put that mindset in. It was like I'm competing with myself, but I'm competing with my peers. These people in these classes, you know, that I'm, I'm going to, you know, like I'm learning from them just like they learning from me. But I knew, like I said in the back of my mind, if I quit, I was letting myself down, I was letting my family down. So I don't know, I always had this mindset. Even now today, like it's like going after a doctoral degree. Roy Shavers [00:08:12]: Nobody in my family, my immediate family, has a degree but me, Me and my oldest sister, we got different dads. But when I look at that, it's like that's what I'm pushing for, is to change the dynamic, change the mindset of the people that's in my family, to show them that education ain't just education. It's not just about learning from a, oh, I can do this for a job. It's about learning from a life standpoint. And that's what I don't know, I look at education is like how much I didn't learnt about just life skills and how I've applied it to my life. So I don't know, man, like I'm proud of myself for the most part, you know, is the work and the effort that I put into grinding and getting to where I want to be. I feel like I'm still not where I, where I really want to be at, but I'm pushing towards those goals. I don't know, this is something that I always told myself that going after a doctoral degree was Years ago my 20s, I'm 42, I just had a birthday, but I told myself that this in my 20s, like this is a goal, you know, I might not go for it right after the first Masters, but I'm pursuing and I don't know, this is just where I am and how Confident that I see myself. Roy Shavers [00:09:19]: You know, once I start some, I always have to finish it. I'm never not going to finish what I put my mind to. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:26]: And as you've been talking about the fact that you're going to be working on a doctorate degree very soon, you're, you're moving into that program. But the first step that you took was to get a specialist degree, an education specialist degree. And I guess bring me to that point. What made you decide that a specialist degree was what you wanted to do next and which is now leading you into the edd? Roy Shavers [00:09:47]: I know working here we got perks and benefits of working on a college campus. I think some of us don't take advantage of the tuition reimbursement on a college campus. But I know that was one of the things in my mind was like, Roy, you don't work on three different campuses and you haven't taken advantage of the tuition reimbursement. But I don't know, when I started here, it was a goal was to go back to school, which was almost three years ago. I told myself that I wanted to go back to school, to work, to pursue a doctoral degree. When I got here, I talked to a couple of different colleagues and they talked about the specialist. It was centered on K through 12, K through 12 administration. And they were like, it's not fit for people that work in higher ed. Roy Shavers [00:10:30]: And I used to always say, well, how isn't it? You know, we work with, we work in education, and if it's K through 12, kids that we do get are coming from they 12th grader, they still learning, you know, I don't know. And I challenged myself. I was like, I can really make this work because I'm working with these same kids, you know, like these same students, they're going to, at some point they're going to reach me if they plan on coming to college. So I just started tying that to, okay, what I do every day. You know, I talk to students, talk to students about their goals and I talk to students about life things. So I just started tying that to what I do and how I could see the transition from K12 to higher ed. And as far as in the middle being that middleman person. So that's how I tie my mindset to going after the specialist. Roy Shavers [00:11:20]: And I plan to do that within the EDD because it's still centered around K12 education. One of my main focuses right now is, I mentioned it before, is being a first generation college student. I'm working on a first generation College student project where, you know, I'm doing some storytelling. So it's like putting people's stories out here, talking about the things that they do and the things that they learned and being able to share those stories with other first gen or other students to inspire them, you know, like, okay, you the first in your family, you know, that's great. But you know, somebody else can use those stories as an inspiration to help them reach their goal. So I don't know, I just love what I do and I love, I don't know, I love education. You know, we never stop learning as far as what we're doing. So that's why I'm pursuing that is that passion to never stop learning. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:10]: Every time that you make a transition into a new degree, there is a transition and you have to figure out for yourself what does it mean for me to be able to be successful in this learning environment. Every school is different, every degree is different, the expectations of faculty are different. And you found success. You got through the master's degree, you've gotten through your specialist degree. Now you're moving into a doctorate degree in education. As you think back to your first degree, your second degree, and you think back to those transitions themselves, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success as you transitioned into those programs and what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout the graduate school experience? Roy Shavers [00:12:52]: I'm an athlete. I had to put that mindset, I had to really put that mindset in my head is treat this as I'm running the race. I don't want to lose. You know, like, I feel like if I gave up, I lost. So being an athlete, a lot of people got negative things to say about being an athlete, but being an athlete taught me how to be a student. It taught me how to balance my life not just from an athletic standpoint, but being an a student athlete. So being a student first, you know, I had to go to class in order to be eligible. I had to do study hall, I had to work a part time job. Roy Shavers [00:13:32]: So that mindset is what puts me where I am now. It's like, I want to win, I don't want to lose. So everything that I do it from away, I tie it to work, I tie it to my personal life. I treat it as being an athlete. I'm just trying to win, you know, like I'm, I'm running the race or I'm playing the game, I don't know. I, I joke with students and, and I tell them, I said, today how much you gonna hit, you know, how many points you gonna hit today in, in the game. This is your life. I ain't saying don't treat it like a game, but sometimes we got to play defense. Roy Shavers [00:14:02]: We might have to block a couple shots, you know, from things that goes on in our life. So I treat it like that, like I try to look at my life in different aspects, like of the things that I've done. So when it comes to education, that's how I'm tying everything to. It is, is okay, I'm playing basketball today. Or you might get five points today and you might get five blocks. But don't fall out the game. You know what I mean? Like, falling out the game is being negative. You may be playing hard, but you looking at things in negative, negative aspect. Roy Shavers [00:14:33]: And I, I don't, I try not to do that. So I don't know, I just look at everything from being a athlete. I got that athlete mindset where it's like, I want to win, you know, so that's just that mentality that I have is never giving up, you know, Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:46]: I appreciate that because I think you do have to keep pushing and you have to not give up. I mean, there's going to be times when things get hard, things get challenging, and you have to push through. I love the mentality of the athlete because I think that while not every person is an athlet, the way to think like that as going into graduate school, definitely, if you can think like that and push yourself like you do as an athlete, you definitely are going to win in the, in the end. So I appreciate you sharing that. Now you mentioned the fact that like, you just finished your educational specialist degree and I can see the parallel specifically with your, with your master's degree. Talk to me about the Ed specialist degree because you said, you talked about the fact that you had to really push yourself and push your faculty to be able to allow for you to be able to find those connections. And I think there's going to be other students out there that may find a program that they feel is a very good fit, but they might get some pushback. And like you had to do, they have to advocate for themselves. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:48]: Now that you've finished the ED specialist degree, while it was initially focused on K12 administration, talk to me about how you're utilizing the knowledge that you learned in that degree on a regular basis. Roy Shavers [00:16:02]: Well, you could use some of the tools that they have, like the my school data. You may be working with a student that comes from a different School district that you may not have any information about. You can go through there and look up, okay, this was what this school was about. They may be high performing in English or they may have been low performing. And those are things like you doing your homework on helping the student. Like things that you can look at. Like other things that you can look at. Like I, it was things that I never even heard of because I never worked working. Roy Shavers [00:16:34]: I've never stepped foot inside of K12 administration. So that my school data, one of the projects that I did in one class, I was trying to flip it to doing something within the higher ed realm. And the professor was like, no, I'm challenging you to use my school data. I want you to look up, pick a school district and I want you to do some research on the school district looking at the, my step data, you know, some of the, some of the testing things and, and the English levels and the math levels and where they are and compare and contrast and give me your recommendations. I want you to put your leadership hat on as if you were the, the superintendent of this school district. What would you do? What would you do to try to change the environment here, the learning environment. So it was stuff like that that kind of made me be like, dang, I never really looked at it from that angle. And then a lot of the things that they deal with on a daily bas. Roy Shavers [00:17:33]: Working with young kids, you know, you working with K through 12 is not the higher ed piece. So one of the classes that I really liked was the law class. You know, the law class made you look at some things different because it's like you working with young, young adults, I, I call them young adults, but you're working with teenagers. So the things that they do, like we see all these different things that, that goes on in the school when it comes to cell phones, it comes to things that's happening in that realm. So I had to sit back and say, we just don't. We may make a decision in higher ed one way, but in the K12, you gotta kind of sit back. You can't just make a decision like that because it'll jeopardize a whole bunch of people. You know, it'll jeopardize a whole bunch of students, it jeopardize some of the staff and faculty. Roy Shavers [00:18:20]: So it was like, you have to know the proper steps to take in order to make the right decisions in that area of education. And I don't know, I just, I enjoy learning some of that stuff because you wouldn't look at it from the K12, you wouldn't look at it in the higher ed side, things that you see on the K12 side. So I don't know. It was a good challenge. Even some of the things that they asked us to do, like article critiques. I did an article critique in one class and we had to present on it. And the professor didn't put me up to reaching out to the person that I did the article critique on. And I, I actually reached out to the person that wrote the article and had a whole conversation, kind of like how we doing on this zoom right now? And I asked them different questions and, and this was a part of my presentation. Roy Shavers [00:19:08]: I taught myself how to use Adobe on Premiere Pro and I edited an actual video and that was my presentation. I was looking at doing things a little bit different than from the traditional realm where we use PowerPoint presentation. I said I'm gonna create a video and show how I engaged in conversation. And I think grad school is about networking too. So, you know, it gave me a chance to network with a educator that's out here that's doing research on something that, that I myself looking at down the road. So I don't know. Never be afraid if you listen into this podcast, never be afraid to reach out to somebody that you actually read in the article that's that wrote an article. You see something in the references where you didn't looked at something and you see another article. Roy Shavers [00:19:55]: Reach out to the people if you got questions, you know about it. It's a part of networking, you know, that's part of learning too, you know, so I think they would be happy. The guy was happy to actually sit down and have a conversation with me. So I don't know. I've met another colle that works in higher ed that I know maybe one day I might meet in person at another conference. So I don't know. That's another piece of advice that I could give to somebody that's jumping into the grad school gang. Reach out to some of these people that you reading about, if they still Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:23]: alive in graduate school, can definitely be challenging, especially as you go through looking at balancing things and balancing life. How did you balance school, work, family, personal responsibilities while going through graduate school? Roy Shavers [00:20:36]: Well, the first semester back it was a little rough because I hadn't been in school for a while and towards the end of the semester a lot of things kind of caught up with me. You have a couple of different papers and some assignments due all at the same time. It kind of brought Me back to being a student athlete where it's like, okay, you balancing multiple things and you capable of doing it. So sometimes I have to slow myself down because is that athlete in me, you know, you just always on the move, but I don't know, it brought back that athlete. Okay, you going to practice after you leave practice, what was you doing where you was going to study or you was going to work? I had to block things off the way that I did when I was 20 years old. You know, I had to bring that side of back to me. So I don't know, it was all balance. Once you learn that balance you good when it comes to that. Roy Shavers [00:21:27]: But was it tough? Yes, it was tough. You putting a lot of energy into reading, writing, and then having your own personal life. So I don't know, I just had to find my balance when it comes to time management. I feel like a lot of people can give you a lot of advice on how to use your time, but you the only person that can give yourself advice on what are you actually doing. When we talk about procrastination, you know, you know, what you're supposed to be doing when it comes to actually being a student, preparing for the papers, preparing for the test. So I don't know, it just took me back to that, being an athlete. I always talk about being a student athlete. It took me back to that where you can balance multiple things. Roy Shavers [00:22:09]: You've done it. So I don't know. I always go back to that. That's what's always in my mind. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:13]: As you think back to your graduate school experience, what's one thing that you wish that someone had told you before you started graduate school? Roy Shavers [00:22:22]: I can't really say. I mean, everybody's experience is gonna be different. I don't know. What I wish I would have done was stuck with my mindset to go straight through, never stop. I had so much momentum on me when I was 24. I think I got my masters at 23, so 24 in my finishing this in my 20s. I wish I would have finished doctoral degree in my 20s, but you can't predict the future and how you do things with your life. I had a kid and all these different things that happened to me in my 20s, and I'm thankful for those things that happened to me. Roy Shavers [00:22:56]: That was what mold me into the person that I am. It got me to kind of slow myself down and start finding myself. So with all the things that happened to me, I feel like it molded me. Even with the time frame stopping after the Masters and getting some work experience. You know, I think that was what one of the advisors recommended me to do, was get some work experience before actually jumping into, to another program so that you can apply some of the things that you learned in the program to what you actually doing for work. So I don't know, it took a. Some of the stuff that I learned over the course of the first Masters that was at Eastern, I was able to start applying that over, over the years from, you know, that first advisor job that I had and working with Trio Student Support Services, some of the student development theories that I like, like I could apply those to the things that I was doing within the program. So it was just about taking your time. Roy Shavers [00:23:54]: Everything will level up to where it's supposed to be at when the time is right. So I always see my, like I said, I always, I've been telling myself like that I could see myself as a director, but right now is not the time. Like I'm still focused on what it is that I want and that's like I'm shooting towards the, you know, doctoral degree. So an opportunity for that to happen will happen at some point. But right now I just, from, from some of the people that I talk to, the mentors that I talk to, they, they tell me, just do the work now, Roy, and it'll show, you know, so that's my main focus right now, is doing the work and letting my work show what I'm capable of for the next opportunity that's put in, in front of me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:24:37]: And finally, as you think back to your different graduate degrees and the experiences you've had in graduate school, what are some tips other than what you've said already that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Roy Shavers [00:24:51]: You do got to have some type of sense of what it is that you want. It might not happen right right away. If you pursuing a master's in something, at least have some type of plan put in place. You may not have a mentor, but I definitely say get a mentor. The mentor is the number one thing because they can help you along the way to map out things that you can't see for yourself. One of my mentors always told me to. I left Eastern from my first advisor job. He told me that I needed to stay put at the next school that I was at for at least five years because you don't want to be considered a jumper. Roy Shavers [00:25:26]: Like jumping from school to school, it doesn't look good from a resume standpoint. So that's what I did. I stayed put to show some type of commitment, you know, like I'm committed to actually my job and the work that I do. So it's just about being patient. You know, I think the biggest thing is finding patience within yourself and having a plan for what it is that you want to do. So definitely getting a mentor, somebody that you can talk to, whether it's an advisor, whether it's a supervisor, somebody that can help you along the way to see your vision all the way out. So like a coach, Everybody needs a coach. So that's the biggest thing that I take for grad school. Roy Shavers [00:26:06]: You know, you may have an idea, or you may say you want to be a social worker, but it may be something else. You may be a counselor. You know, you may take the counselor route instead of going to social work work route. That's what a mentor and a coach is there to help you along the ways to. To guide you down that pathway. So I say that if you thinking about grad school and you're not all the way, sure, ask questions. Get out here and ask questions to somebody. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:31]: Well, Roy, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. I know it's not over. You've got a whole nother degree coming, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out and how that helps to mold you and shape you in your next direction. But I really want to say thank you for your time today, for sharing your journey, and I wish you all the best. Roy Shavers [00:26:51]: I appreciate it. No problem. And hopefully we can talk after I finish the doctorate. We can have this conversation again. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:58]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me@FlintGrad OfficeMflint. Eduardo.
Balancing Business and Graduate School: Insights from Theo Ellis
Are you considering graduate school but worried about the challenges ahead? The latest episode of the Victors in Grad School podcast is a must-listen, offering valuable perspectives for current and aspiring grad students. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint, this episode features a candid conversation with Theo Ellis, a double graduate degree holder and dynamic entrepreneur. Embracing the Graduate School Journey The episode opens with Dr. Christopher Lewis emphasizing the idea of graduate school as a journey, where everyone—no matter their starting point—can find ways to prepare and succeed. Theo Ellis embodies this ethos, sharing how his love for learning and a pivotal scholarship motivated him to pursue his first master's degree. His second graduate degree was an organic decision, sparked by an advisor's encouragement and the realization he was only a few courses away. The Reality of Transition and Balance Transitioning from undergrad to graduate studies was a significant leap for Theo Ellis. He discusses how the depth and quality of work expected at the graduate level required not only discipline but a true understanding of the material. Theo Ellis also gets real about balancing family, work, and academic obligations. His secret? Rigorous organization, staying on top of the syllabus, and never letting deadlines overwhelm him. The Value of Relationships A major theme is the importance of building relationships. Theo Ellis credits mentors like Dr. Witt and his peers for guidance, support, and lasting friendship. These connections not only enriched his grad school experience but continue to influence his personal and professional life. From Classroom to Business Impact What sets Theo Ellis apart is how he applies classroom knowledge directly to his businesses. He explains how lessons in entrepreneurship, finance, and marketing have empowered him to innovate and expand within the music industry and beyond. The episode is packed with practical examples of using graduate education in real life. Mindset Shifts and Advice for Aspiring Grads Reflecting back, Theo Ellis wishes he'd started his academic journey sooner and underscores the mindset shifts essential for graduate success—higher standards, deeper understanding, and unwavering discipline. His advice is clear: don't procrastinate, stay organized, and make the most of your resources. Listen and Be Inspired Whether you're thinking about graduate school or already on the path, listen to this inspiring episode of Victors in Grad School. Dr. Christopher Lewis and Theo Ellis deliver both motivation and actionable strategies to help you find success in your own journey. Ready for more? Listen to the full episode and embark on your own path to becoming a victor in grad school! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, I love that you come back every week to be able to work on achieving the goals that you've set for yourself. I call this a journey because you are on a journey. Every person that is going and thinking about graduate school, going through graduate school, you are on a journey. No matter if you are at the very beginning where you're just starting to think about it, or if you've applied, maybe you've gotten accepted, maybe you're in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:42]: No matter where you are in this path, there are things that you can do right now to prepare yourself even better and to help you to be successful in the journey that you're on. And that's why this show exists. This podcast was created to be able to help you to find success in in that graduate school journey sooner. And we do that through giving you opportunities to learn from other people every week. I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can help you to be able to think about graduate school in a little bit different way through the experiences that they had through their graduate school experience. And today we got another great guest. Theo Ellis is with us today. And Theo is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:28]: He has two graduate degrees from the University of Michigan, Flint, and a really excited to have him here to share some of his own journey with you. Theo, thanks so much for being here today. Theo Ellis [00:01:37]: Thank you for having me, Dr. Luce. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:38]: Well, I'm really excited to have you here and I want to turn the clock back in time. So we're going to start by turning the clock back. And I know you did your undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan, Flint, and at some point in that journey, you said, yes, I've got to keep going. I've got to keep moving forward. I know I need more education to be able to do what I want to do. Bring me back to that point. And what was going through your head? Theo Ellis [00:02:03]: Well, for me, it was very organic, actually, because through the process of obtaining my undergrad degree, you know, I was genuinely enjoying learning and the growth that I was experiencing in that. And so at one point, I learned about the Maize and Blue Scholar Award and I set that as my goal. Not just to have that accolade, but also because that it does come with the additional funding to be used towards the higher education and the master's degree. And so that's kind of how I started my journey towards the first master's degree. The second one I originally did not have any intention of getting. Honestly, I really didn't until I believe I was talking with an advisor. And the advisor said, well, you know, you only need to take, I think it was six more classes or something like this, and then you'll have the second one. And I said, well, it's only six more classes. Theo Ellis [00:02:50]: Why not? So that's how that one came. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:52]: Completely understand. And sometimes things organically show up like that for you and there's opportunities that are set in front of you. Usually I ask, how did you choose the University of Michigan Flint for your graduate degrees? But you kind of answered that in the sense that it was organic. And with the additional funding that you got, that seems to have made sense for you to be able to continue on with the same university and to continue on toward getting that first and then that second graduate degree. In every experience, when you transition into a new degree, there's some transition that happens. Going from undergrad to grad. You are going to be taught in different ways, you're going to be challenged in different ways. There's different expectations that faculty have of you as a student. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:37]: Talk to me about that transition for you and going from undergrad into your graduate work. And what did you have to do as you transitioned into the program to be successful, and what did you have to do as you were going through the program to maintain that success throughout the graduate school journey? Theo Ellis [00:03:55]: Well, the biggest transition that I noticed right off the get go was not just the level and quality of work that's expected of you, but also the depth of it. You know, you go from writing papers that are maybe five pages, something like this, to now we need 10, 12. A lot more sources are required. Again, just a lot more depth and level of understanding of the material is required of you. And that challenge was fun to me. I embraced it. Right. I didn't run from it. Theo Ellis [00:04:22]: I didn't know, oh my goodness, what am I going to do here? Okay, this is what we got to do today. Let's go do that. And so I really enjoyed the journey itself. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:29]: You know, one of the things that I wanted to delve a little bit into with you is balance, because you're a busy guy. And for anyone that has never seen Theo's LinkedIn page, when you look at Theo's LinkedIn page, you have to ask the question, how the heck are you doing everything that you're doing? Because he is involved with about five different businesses and leading the charge on all of these businesses. And he was going to school while he was doing that as well. So I guess I want to know, and I want to, I want to get some of your take on balance, how did you balance school, work, family, personal responsibilities while going to graduate school? Theo Ellis [00:05:08]: It was grueling at times. I'm not going to pretend like it wasn't. There were times it was very challenging. However, the biggest key to all of it is just organization, staying on top. First day of class, you're getting your syllabus. So you already know the plan. You already know, okay, this is due on this day. This is what I got to do this day. Theo Ellis [00:05:24]: And just approaching it a little bit at a time, not letting it all overwhelming you or waiting until the last minute and then everything's due at once. That's when you run into problems. As long as you stick to your syllabus, if you can stay ahead of it, you know, read ahead in a chapter or two when you get some free time or whatnot. But just staying disciplined and organized was the biggest factor to my success. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:44]: One of the other things that I'm always interested in is that as you go through graduate school, there's people that you can relate to, there's people that you can connect with, and there's relationships that you're going to be building along the way. Talk to me about the relationships that you were able to build with faculty, with peers, and how were they impactful in the graduate school journey that you went on? Theo Ellis [00:06:06]: First and foremost, one of the first relationships for me that was formed was with faculty. Dr. Witt, he very quickly became mentor for me, helped guide me, and, you know, in the beginning with my undergrad, I wasn't sure if I was going to go on to pursue higher education. At one time, I had even considered attending law school. After this, and through various conversations with Dr. Wipp, he really helped guide the path that I was on and also became a great friend in the process. And then as I continued on higher degrees, he was still there to advise and help. And he helped oversee my research projects. Theo Ellis [00:06:39]: And he just, anytime I needed something or just someone to talk to or bounce ideas around, he was always there. So very thankful to Dr. Witt. Then on a peer basis, I mean, I have peers in mind that we are still connected to this day. We hang out in the summertime and barbecue and just genuine friendships. There through people that were pursuing their master's degrees as well and had a passion for business as well. And so I'm grateful for those because, you know, they're all wonderful people and I would not have met none of them had I not gone through this process. What I can tell you is this. Theo Ellis [00:07:08]: When I first started thinking about it, remember I'm a non traditional student. And so coming back to school after many years, when I first started to even consider this for, even for the undergrad, do I really want to go back to school at this age, you know, 40 some, whatever. Do I really, you know, can I, you know, do I, do I have the capacity? I don't know. You know, let's find out. And then do I want to take on the debt? Do I want to take on this debt? Do I really need another bill right now? In the end, what made my decision was this, that's okay. If I were to spend, go get a brand new truck or something, 40, 50,000, maybe $60,000 truck, I would have no problem going, getting that new vehicle, signing the papers and having a new vehicle. So what's the difference if I spend that 40, 50,000 on a degree, something that's going to better me, something that I'll have for the rest of my life, the truck's eventually going to die, this degree won't. And so I said, you know what? If I can take on debt for a new vehicle, I can take on debt to better myself. Theo Ellis [00:07:58]: And that was what made my decision. And then in the end it worked out that, you know, I was very fortunate that I had minimal debt because of the way that I performed and the opportunities that were presented and the way of merit scholarships or other grants, etc. But I still have debt and going into the master's program, still have debt. You know, I pay my student loans now, but it is all worth it. I don't regret any of it. I'm very grateful for the opportunities that I had while I was at U of M Flint and also the education that I gained. I went there seeking a better understanding of business. I had already been running my business prior to that, and I said, I want to level up on my business acumen. Theo Ellis [00:08:34]: I gained that and then some. So it worked out for me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:37]: I guess one of the questions that I have is, as you have gone through both of these programs, you already mentioned that you run your own business. And I'm going to say businesses, because you do have a number of businesses that you are running. Talk to me about how you are taking what you learned in both of your graduate degrees and using that on a daily basis. Theo Ellis [00:08:56]: Well, currently I'm working on expanding my business. You know, the core of my business that like that you see on LinkedIn and that ProSound Media, what we do is it's in the music industry. So we help artists companies license their music for tv, film and commercials, distribute their music globally. So you know, get it on Spotify, Apple Music for them. We handle their music publishing which is, you know, on the, on the copyright side again, that's all part of the licensing. So a lot of the administrative stuff, the behind the scenes stuff is what we help artists and labels with. Recently I've been expanding my business with the boom in AI. How can I utilize this for my company? And so what I've done is developed a couple products that artists and businesses can use. Theo Ellis [00:09:37]: One of them is called Orbit. And what Orbit does is it basically gets eliminates busy work. You know, all of us have busy work. You go away for the weekend, you come to work Monday morning, you may spend two hours cleaning out your email before you actually start to do some work, right? That's busy work. And so I developed AI that'll clean your email out for you and basically bring the important things to the forefront. Kind of like having your own personal assistant there, right? So through the process of developing these different AI platforms that I've been working on, I we got to figure out what's going to be the mvp. You know, that's something I learned at U of M Flint. You know, the entrepreneurial side of it, where's our break even? What's it going to cost to run this thing? You know, at the end of the day, what's going to be the net present value, right? These are the things that I learned at U of M Flint. Theo Ellis [00:10:21]: These are things that I did not know prior to coming there. And I use them all on a daily basis as I'm learning and figuring out because I have three or four different ones that I'm working on right now. Okay, which one are we going to go with? Which markets are we going to launch them in? Understanding the marketing side of it and the importance of that, right? Because you can have a great idea, but if you're targeting the wrong audience, the not going to matter. And then there is taking all of the knowledge that I learned in business school, coupling that, you know, different frameworks that I've learned, you know, whether it's Porter's forces or the Harvard, the business canvas model, taking those things, applying it to the knowledge I have with the music industry. Okay. And how can I take both of these things and merge them together to help people in the music industry? And what I came up with was the business of music, which literally applies strategy, core business principles, and mixes in the things you need to know, the knowledge you need to know of the music industry because it is its own niche industry and it has its own nuances that are very particular to it that don't exist in other industries. So we came up with the book, and none of that would have been possible, or at least maybe not to the scale that it is if not for the education that I gained at U of M. Flynn, talk to me Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:28]: about a defining moment for you as you were going through that graduate education that might have been, let's say, the turning point, or that defining moment, as I'd mentioned, that shape your academic or professional journey. Theo Ellis [00:11:40]: That's a very difficult question for me to answer. And the reason being is because I went not not only full time, but full year round. I didn't do fall, winter. I did fall, winter, spring, summer, fall, winter, spring, summer. I did that for four years straight. And at the end of four years, I had three degrees. So it all just happened so quickly. And then at the end, we're done. Theo Ellis [00:12:00]: That's it. I mean, I remember when I first, you know, graduated for the last time and I. And I was. I didn't know what to do. I was so used to having an assignment due or something that, you know, what do I do now? I got free time, you know, so. So it's very difficult for me to have a defining moment because I was just so in it and just focused on achieving the goals and getting it done right, that I really didn't even have time to sit back and absorb it until I was finally done. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:22]: What's something that you wish that someone had told you before starting graduate school Theo Ellis [00:12:26]: to do it sooner? I had been contemplating going back to school for a few years, you know, and you know, for me it was really Covid was what the turning point was. I said, you know what, it's now or never. And so 21 was the first year that I started back with my undergrad, but definitely wish that somebody would have encouraged me to get involved sooner and get this done sooner. I think I'd have been so much better for it and probably further ahead than I am now. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:48]: And I guess as you think about your graduate school experience and you think about the things that you learned in that graduate school experience, what would you say are some mindset shifts that you had to make for yourself to, to find success in graduate school. Theo Ellis [00:13:04]: The quality of work that's expected. You can sometimes I guess get by if you want in undergrad with how you frame your answers. But that's not going to fly at the graduate level. Like you really have to understand the work. And so that was a mind shift for me, I think that's probably the biggest one is just understanding that the level and quality of work that is expected of you daily, day in and day out. And I mean one of my last classes I took, we had to turn in like 27 page paper. That's a lot, you know, it's a lot. And for it to be cohesive because you can start first three pages, you're writing one thing and you can kind of drift, right? So to keep it all cohesive and make sure that from start to finish you're on that one topic, I mean that's a challenge. Theo Ellis [00:13:45]: But again, I enjoyed every bit of it and I'm grateful for all my teachers that I had there. Dr. Greg Lawrence, I had the privilege of participating in the study abroad trip to Japan. That was, that was a formative experience. That was life changing, that was amazing. And seeing how they do business over there, learned some good things there as well as just the culture of Japan and for you yourself even, you know, you were instrumental in helping guide me when we launched the Graduate Students of Color Student club. You know, that which did not exist previously and you were very instrumental in that and so I thank you for that. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:15]: Now as you look back at your own graduate school experience and you think about the degrees that you got if you were to do it all over again, would you choose the same programs or path and why or why not? Theo Ellis [00:14:25]: I would change one thing potentially anyway. Potentially change it. I don't know that I 100% would for sure. Business MBA, that's staying right? Like that's not going anywhere. I just have a passion for business, entrepreneurship, I love it. And so that would never change. Potentially for my mslod, maybe instead of doing the joint MBA mslod, I would do the MBA and computer science one just because of where we're at in this day and age with technology and AI and all this, that definitely would be beneficial. I'm writing these AI programs with the limited Python knowledge that I have. Theo Ellis [00:14:56]: That's been for the most part self taught. But had I had some classes in that, probably have this app done a lot sooner so. But you know, again it's all part of the journey. And you know, that's one of the things also that going to University of Michigan Flint taught me was that really there's not anything that I can't teach myself because a lot of this stuff is online. And so you do have the interaction with the teachers and this and that, but a lot of it you're having to read the book and kind of self taught here and so that doing that and understanding that, yeah, you can do that and actually retain it and understand it. And if you have questions, the teachers are there, etc. But when I got done, I said, man, there's not nothing I can't teach myself. So I'm grateful for that as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:34]: And then finally, as you think back again on your graduate education and you think of other people that are thinking about going to graduate school, whether it be for business or some other completely different area, what are some tips that you might others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Theo Ellis [00:15:50]: Well, the first thing is don't put it up, don't think about it, don't waste time. Secondly, stay disciplined, stay focused. Most importantly, stay organized. You know that discipline and that that organization is what helps keep the success, you know, following the syllabus. You know, pay attention to the syllabus. It's not just a piece of paper to ignore. It literally has everything you need to know contained within it. And if you just follow that, you'll get the perfect grade. Theo Ellis [00:16:12]: Every time it's going to tell you. It gives you the syllabus, in my opinion, gives you the cheat code. Here's what you need to do, Just follow it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:18]: Well, Theo, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today and I wish you all the best as you are working through the app and all of the other things that you're working on to be able to move forward your businesses and I truly wish you all the best. Theo Ellis [00:16:33]: Thank you sir. It's been my pleasure. And thank you again for having me. I genuinely appreciate, appreciate the opportunity. Speaker D [00:16:37]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at Flintgrad office at umflint. Eduardo.
Finding Success and Balance in Graduate School with Micah Helzerman
Are you contemplating graduate school, currently in the midst of your program, or simply curious about what it takes to thrive in this next phase of education? The Victors in Grad School podcast delivers personal stories, hard-won lessons, and actionable advice from students, alumni, and experts. In the latest episode, host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Micah Helzerman, a master's student in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Michigan-Flint, to discuss the unique journey that is graduate school. Embracing the Graduate School Journey A major theme in this episode is the concept of graduate education as a multifaceted journey. As Dr. Christopher Lewis reminds listeners, grad school is not just about applying and getting accepted—it's about ongoing growth, self-discovery, and working toward long-term goals. Micah Helzerman shares how his decision to continue beyond his undergraduate degree was fueled both by inspiration from research opportunities and a desire to confront the challenging job market. Self-Motivation and Building Structure Transitioning from undergrad to grad school is a leap in both responsibility and independence. Micah Helzerman reveals how graduate coursework is more self-driven and project-based, requiring students to take control of their schedules and motivation. Developing a structured routine, utilizing tools like calendars, and consistently reflecting on goals become keys to success. If you're wondering how to boost your own productivity and avoid burnout, Micah Helzerman's honest insights about finding balance between work, study, and personal life are a must-listen. Research, Relevance, and Future Goals Another standout aspect of the episode is the discussion of research. Micah Helzerman's current work focuses on how AI large language models interact with math problems, exploring their impact on education and student learning. He emphasizes the importance of engaging with current research early and often—a valuable tip for anyone planning a path in academia or research-heavy fields. Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Choosing the Right Program Graduate school can be daunting, and feelings of self-doubt are common. Micah Helzerman discusses imposter syndrome and how he works to focus on his unique strengths, rather than comparisons to others (00:14:22). He also stresses the importance of finding a program—and a community—that feels supportive and aligned with your goals. Are you ready to be inspired, gain clarity, and learn actionable tips from those who've walked the path? Tune in to "Victors in Grad School" for honest conversations and real-world advice to help you navigate your graduate journey. Don't miss this episode! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Hello and welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week. I love that you come back every week to be able to learn, to grow, to work on this journey that you're on. And it is a journey I always, whenever I'm talking to graduate students, I try to impart in every student that I talk to. That graduate school is not one thing. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:44]: Right? It's not going to be, you know, just applying. It's not just, you know, getting in. It's it. I mean, there is a whole journey that goes along with this. From the moment you figure out in your head that you say, yes, I want to do this, to the moment that you apply, to the moment you get accepted, to the moment that you're going through that, that program and you're looking at that light at the end of the tunnel and you're working toward the goals that you set for yourself. You're on a journey that you can start working on today. And that's why this show exists. This show exists to be able to help you and provide you with some, some. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:20]: Some ideas, some thoughts, some for. Some perspectives and for. And it offers you an opportunity to learn from others that have gone before you. That's why every week, I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences to be able to provide you with an. To learn from them in the journey that they've been on. And today we got another great guest. Micah Helzerman is with us today. And Micah is a master's student in the Artificial Intelligence program at the University of Michigan, Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:51]: And I'm really excited to be able to talk to him about his own experiences in the journey that he's been on and for him to share that with us. Micah, thanks so much for being here today. Micah Helzerman [00:02:02]: Yeah, thank you for inviting me. I'm excited to be here. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:05]: Well, I'm really excited to have you here as well. And I guess I want to turn the clock back a few years because I know you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Flint, and you got a bachelor's degree in computer science. And at some point, at some point in that journey, you made a decision. You said, I'm not done. I'm going to continue on. And you decided, I'm going to go on this, this path, this journey toward graduate school. Bring me back to that point. And what made you decide that graduate school was right for you at that time? Micah Helzerman [00:02:36]: Yeah, I would have to say, to be honest, it was actually late in my senior year when I realized that I wanted to go back and complete my master's degree. I was a bit intimidated by the job market. I had heard from other peers who'd graduated before me that it was getting quite difficult to get jobs in computer science, at least compared to like five, 10 years prior. And this was about six months before agentic AI was becoming the new thing. We have things like Copilot or Quad code that can do much of the work that young software developers are doing upon graduation. And so a lot of the roles are either being filled by like senior developers or AI. And that kind of intimidated me. But another reason why I wanted to go back and get a master's was I began doing research my senior year as well. Micah Helzerman [00:03:27]: I had two really great faculty that I did research with. The first one was Dr. Mayhem. It was my first year up project and I learned about it through the course I was taking with them. And in the second semester of my senior year, I began a UROP project with Dr. Wilson, who is my current research advisor. I was actually talking about an idea I had with another professor. And thankfully that professor was able to get us both in contact with each other so that we could work on research together. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:57]: Now, I know you did your undergraduate work here at the University of Michigan Flint. And as you said, you were in your, your graduate, you were in your senior year. You made that decision. You wanted to continue on to graduate school. Now you decided to stay at the University of Michigan Flint, go into a newer program in artificial intelligence. There are other artificial intelligence programs out there. And I guess bring me to that decision making process for yourself. And what made you decide that the University of Michigan Flint was the right program for you at that time? Micah Helzerman [00:04:32]: Yeah, I knew a lot of reasons this was the right place for me. For one, I did want to stay close to home with my family. And the University of Michigan Flint kind of feels like a second home to me at this point. I remember even like elementary school, high school, I went on different field trips to the campus. My two older siblings, they completed their undergraduate degree two years and three years before I completed mine. And I just knew I wanted to come back here. Also, I knew many of the faculty who I would be taking courses with. I've even taken courses with my research advisor. Micah Helzerman [00:05:04]: And so I knew I Have these strong relations with these faculty members, the strong connection to Flint, to the university. I wanted to continue pursuing my education here because I knew great things would come from it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:15]: So going from being an undergraduate student to a graduate student is a transition. There are different expectations, different ways of thinking, different perspectives that you have to be able to bring into what you're learning inside and outside the classroom. And in those transitions, I know that there are things that you have to do to be able to prepare yourself, but also to be able to make that transition well. So talk to me about as you transitioned into that graduate program, what did you have to do to be able to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do to maintain your success throughout the entire graduate school journey that you've been on? Micah Helzerman [00:05:56]: Yeah, I would say the biggest difference between undergrad and grad school is everything feels a lot more self motivated. So that comes to like doing coursework, also like doing my research, everything is self motivated. The courses are mostly project based. And in the master's, which was separate from my undergrad, there were some project courses in my undergrad, but it was mostly like attending lectures and doing homework assignments. Whereas in my grad program so far I think all of my classes have had semester long projects where you continuously build on them. I think one reason why that is the case is because many of the students who are pursuing the master's in AI program, they come from different backgrounds. So a lot of them actually don't come from computing backgrounds. And so having the courses be more project based helps them use their different skills from their different backgrounds that they come from. Micah Helzerman [00:06:48]: And yeah, so putting like the self motivation is like really key. I've had to get a more rigorous schedule compared to undergrad. I felt like undergrad I was mostly just not winging it, but just I was just barely getting by, I would say. And that wasn't satisfactory for me to achieve my goals in grad school. So I have gotten more rigorous schedule. I've started doing regular exercise and trying to find like a good work. Life balance is very important. A lot of grad students and different programs. Micah Helzerman [00:07:17]: Mental health is more important I would say in grad school. And it kind of ties into this self motivation where if you want to get the most out of grad school, you have to put in a lot of time which, which does take like a lot of energy, a lot of effort and finding the correct balance. It does take some time to adjust compared to undergrad school and something I'm still figuring out. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:37]: I would say, so talk to me about that balance. Because you said that it's really important to find that balance and you're still working on it yourself. So talk to me about currently, how have you found that balance of school, work, family, personal responsibilities while in graduate school? What have you done to get yourself to where you are today and what do you feel like you still need to do to be able to find that ultimate balance for yourself? Micah Helzerman [00:07:59]: Yeah, I would, I would say the one thing I did is I started using Google Calendar and like putting all my events, everything I want to do in there. I'll like take notes of what I want to do each day, each week. Kind of like keep reviewing what I need to be doing, see where I'm at, what I need to do to get to where I want to be. And yeah, like I mentioned, making sure I get the exercise I need each week, making sure I see my friends, I do things with them, and then also spending time with my family, just making sure that I'm not overworking myself. Because I am a person who would sit down and start working on something and keep working on it six hours later and not realize it's 3am and that I have to go back to sleep. So like setting like reminders, calendars, taking notes on myself, how I'm feeling each day, I found has helped a lot. And to to continue improving, I would say each semester is different. You know, you take different courses, different schedule. Micah Helzerman [00:08:54]: So schedules do change. So one thing I can do to improve is to keep getting better at adapting to different schedules. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:01]: Talk to me about the research that you're working on. I know that you said that you've been working on a research project with a faculty member at the university. And research is definitely one thing that is unique when you go to graduate school, that you have an opportunity to be able to delve deeper into something that not only you become passionate about, but others are passionate about as well. And that can offer you some different perspective on the learning that happen that's happening inside and outside the classroom. So talk to me about that. What is that research allowed for you to do and what has it allowed for you to learn as you're going through and preparing for your future? Micah Helzerman [00:09:40]: Yeah, so my current research project is basically studying how large language models interact with math problems at varying difficulty levels. This came from a lot of different motivations. During my undergrad, I did two years of math tutoring and I noticed a lot of the students were using AI. They're using ChatGPT or Gemini to help them study for math. And a lot of, a lot of that can be very useful if it's used correctly. But I noticed it's not really well known how well AI can help assist students learning math. You know, is it just doing their homework for them or is it actually helping to enhance their learning experience outside the classroom? And so that was something I wanted to explore with Dr. Wilson. Micah Helzerman [00:10:24]: So I began learning about large language models, how they work, and studying various papers on large language models solving math questions. And so my work led to a. My first paper, which was recently accepted to acl, which I will present in San Diego in July, which I'm excited for. And it kind of built on my background of math, basically that I wanted to understand how large language models are doing these math questions. And I also want to make sure AI is being used in a way that is helping students and not harming them. We've seen a lot of different papers, a lot of like, news headlines even about how generative AI can lead to this taking away of learning experience by just doing all the work for students and not letting them learn. And that's something I want to help overcome for future students. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:15]: Now you've got about a year left in your program to be able to finish off your master's degree. And as you look into the future and you look at where you are today and where you want to be at the end of the program, talk to me about what are you planning for the next year and what are you hoping to be able to take out of this, which will lead you toward the future that you want. Micah Helzerman [00:11:36]: Yeah, so my second year, I'm actually going to begin the Master's thesis. I hope to continue doing my research and build it into a full thesis. And I guess my goal of that is just to continue building on my research, make it better. And I do hope to apply to a PhD program in the future. Not sure where it will be. I need to do my homework on that. But I do know the University of Michigan Flint, they do have a PhD program. Two of my lab mates are actually part of it. Micah Helzerman [00:12:06]: And it seems like a very successful program. And I might consider reapplying to the University of Michigan Flint for that once I complete my Master's. I am also taking some other user experience classes with Dr. Ann Jonas, which I am going to be excited for because much of my research so far has been more quantitative and just studying large language models, not really studying the human side. And I do want to do some more research on the human side to Get a better understanding of how people are interacting with these large language model systems and how we can improve their experience with using them. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:40]: As you think back to your graduate school experience thus far, what's some something that you wish that someone had told you before starting graduate school? Micah Helzerman [00:12:49]: I think the one thing I wish I did more during my undergrad was reading research papers because it is something that is so important in grad school, at least as someone who is doing research, although it is also important for the grad level courses. So like a lot of the courses there is quite a bit of overlap with what like the current research is looking at, especially in AI. And so having this higher understanding of how AI large language models work from reading research papers would have helped me even more with understanding the curriculum, understanding what I can do, and it really would have helped propel my class projects even further. A lot of these class projects I've seen other students do, they can really basically turn into little startups. They put a lot of time and energy into it and the tools and programs that they create is very like beneficial to many people and it could lead to startups. And if that was something I had known, I probably would have like better prepared myself in undergrad to be able to get the full value out of my grad program. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:53]: Sometimes I hear from graduate students that they have gone as they go through graduate school, that they hit that proverbial wall of not feeling like they belong, that they are an imposter in some ways, that they face that imposter syndrome that people talk about or sometimes have self doubt as they're going through graduate itself. Talk to me about that for yourself and how you may have had to deal with that for yourself. Micah Helzerman [00:14:22]: Yeah, imposter syndrome is definitely a big issue in graduate school and ties back into the mental health of grad students. I, I've personally haven't dealt with it very much, but sometimes in class I do feel like I feel different from the other students. Like some of them are older, like returning after many years in industry, which it does feel like they have a lot more skills than I do, that I should have learned more in my undergrad or I should have gotten my master's degree later. But to try and overcome that, I realized my strengths. I realized how much tutoring I've done, how much research I've done during my senior year undergrad, trying to like realize my skills and building on my skills when I can in order to, from my perspective, put myself in a position similar to the other master's students. So that I feel like I fit in. But I guess not comparing myself to others is also very important because we are all different people. We all have different backgrounds, different skills, different gaps between our skills. Micah Helzerman [00:15:21]: And yeah, just focusing on yourself, proving one day at a time, one week at a time, is very important to find success in grad school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:30]: And finally, as you look back at your graduate education thus far, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education beyond what you've already said that would help them find success sooner? Micah Helzerman [00:15:41]: Yeah, other than finding the correct balance, I guess, making sure you're at the right grad school. So, like, I. I decided I want to go to University of Michigan Flint because I have this strong connection with the faculty. It's close to home, but I know that's not the case for everyone, especially for international students. So going out online, going out on social media, for example, seeing which universities have a really strong social media presence, finding different clubs and organizations that you would feel like you belong to, those are impactful, I would say, in maintaining success. Because in order to be successful in grad school, you do need a strong support system. And I think a lot of that does come from the university you're attending. So I think doing your research, doing your homework on which schools, which programs you want to apply to, will be very key to finding success. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:29]: Well, Mike, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. I know it's not over and you've got definitely more things that you're going to be learning over the next year, but I am really excited to be able to see where this year takes you. And I appreciate you spending some time with us today to share what you've learned thus far. And I wish you all the best. Micah Helzerman [00:16:51]: Yes, thank you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:52]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, Visit visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad officemflint. Eduardo.
From First-Gen Student to PA: Dee Schwalm's Unconventional Grad School Journey
Are you contemplating graduate school or facing doubts about the next step on your academic journey? The latest episode of the Victors in Grad School #podcast is a must-listen for anyone craving a candid, inspiring, and deeply personal look at what it really takes to find success in higher education and beyond. In this episode, host Dr. Christopher Lewis welcomes Dee Schwalm, a three-time University of Michigan-Flint graduate, whose journey exemplifies resilience, adaptability, and dedication. Her story isn't one of a straight line to success but rather a curvy, non-traditional path filled with pivotal moments and conscious choices. Key Themes 1. The Value of a Nonlinear Journey Dee Schwalm opens up about her beginnings as a first-generation college student who hadn't always planned on higher education. Her candid recount of starting at community college, dropping out, and finding her calling after an injury in physical therapy reminds us that success stories often start from moments of uncertainty and unexpected experiences. 2. Embracing Change and Lifelong Learning Not content to rest after earning her Doctorate in Physical Therapy, Dee Schwalm returned to the classroom—14 years later—to become a Physician Assistant. Her drive stemmed from a desire to help fill the urgent healthcare gap and her own curiosity about the medical side of patient care. Her advice: it's never too late to make a change if you feel called to something new. 3. Overcoming Imposter Syndrome Both Dr. Christopher Lewis and Dee Schwalm discuss the very real feeling of imposter syndrome that plagues many graduate students. Dee Schwalm shares powerful strategies for tackling self-doubt—suggesting that confronting what triggers these feelings can help you learn and grow. 4. Balancing Family and Ambition For listeners juggling parenthood and academia, this episode is a goldmine of wisdom. Dee Schwalm details how she structured her time, involved her daughters in her educational journey, and used "failures" as teachable moments for her family. Her pragmatic tips on scheduling, grace, and perseverance apply to anyone feeling stretched between multiple commitments. Tune In for Inspiration Whether you're a prospective grad student, a parent returning to school, or anyone doubting your own path, this episode offers a heartfelt dose of encouragement. Dee Schwalm's journey reminds us all: it's not where you start, but how you keep showing up, adapting, and pushing forward that truly counts. Listen to "Victors in Grad School" and let Dee's story ignite your own next step! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. You know, every week I love that you show up, you're coming back, you're here to learn, and to be able to take that next step, that next step in your journey toward graduate school. And I say it's a journey because it really is a journey. Every person, every person that's either thinking about graduate school, applying to graduate school, going through graduate school, you are on a journey, a journey of learning, a journey of discovery. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:47]: There is a lot of things you're going to be going through, learning, growing, and becoming a different person throughout that experience. That's why this show exists. This show is here to help you on that journey, to help you to find success in the graduate school journey that you're on. No matter if you're a going to physical therapy school, physician assistant school, business school, law school, doesn't matter. There are things that you can do right now to prepare yourself for this journey, to help yourself during the journey and beyond. That's why every week I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can give you some perspective, give you some perspective on what this journey holds for you, but also some things that you might be wanting to think about, some things you might be able to put into play as you're going through this experience. And today we got another great guest. Dee Schwalm is with us today. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:37]: And Dee is a graduate of the University of Michigan, Flint. She actually has three degrees from the University of Michigan, Flint. And we'll talk about that journey of going from an undergraduate student there to getting a degree in physical therapy. But that wasn't enough. She then came back after about 14 years and to become a physician assistant and just graduated from the physician assistant program at the University of Michigan, Flint as well. So we're going to talk about that journey that she's been been on, and I'm really excited to be able to introduce her to Hugh. Dee, thanks so much for being here today. Dee Schwalm [00:02:11]: Thank you for having me. This is exciting. I was honored to be asked. So this is really exciting. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:17]: Well, I'm really excited to have you here today and to talk to you about this journey that you're on. And I guess I want to go back in time. I want to turn the clock Back I said, you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Flint, and at some point in that journey, that, that journey of getting that Bachelor of Science degree in human biology, you made a decision, you made a decision to go to, to get a doctorate in physical therapy. Bring me back to that moment where you said to yourself, yep, this is the reason, this is what I'm doing. And what was going through your head. Dee Schwalm [00:02:46]: Yeah. So my path has been very curvy and not very traditional. I will say that 100%. I'm going to rewind a little bit. So in high school, I was never the person, I'm a first generation college graduate. I was never the person who definitely planned to go to college. My parents didn't really talk about it. We didn't go visit colleges and do the traditional, traditional things. Dee Schwalm [00:03:09]: They wanted me to have a respectable job that I would be able to take care of myself. So that was important. College wasn't out of the question, but it certainly wasn't something I had to do, which I apparently love to do because I keep going back to college. But so I started after high school. I didn't know if I was going to go. And I got the MEEP Michigan Merit Award Scholarship. And this one counselor at Swartz Creek really encouraged me. I remember her chasing me down the hall and was like, deanne, Deanne, you got the scholarship, you have to go to college. Dee Schwalm [00:03:37]: And I thought, man, this 2,500 doll dollars, which was like a million dollars in 1999. So she said, you can use it for college. And I thought, well, you know, maybe I'll go to Mott College. That's close by. So I went and checked it out. And then my parents went and they checked it out. They thought it was good. And I started in psychology and then I moved to graphic design. Dee Schwalm [00:03:56]: And I was sitting in a room with a computer alone all the time. And that's when I realized I need something with people like, this isn't going to work for me. I can't just be locked away. So I ended up dropping out of school because I was paying for it myself. I was waitressing, I had an apartment. I dropped out of school and it was like maybe two semesters. I ended up hurting my knee one day while I was on a run, end up in physical therapy. And it was probably the fourth or fifth visit of pt and I was looking at this PT buzzing around the room teaching people about science, which happened to be my favorite subject. Dee Schwalm [00:04:27]: She was positive she was uplifting, she was busy. There was exercise. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm in love. I have to do this. I have to become a physical therapist. So the next week I figured out, how am I going to transfer classes to U of M Flint. I went and checked it out. I'll say for sure. Dee Schwalm [00:04:44]: The counselors were really inviting and made me feel comfortable at U of M Flint because to me, that felt like a huge campus. I wasn't somebody who was used to that. So I started at U of M Flint, got my degree in human biology and just chased down the dream. I got a list from the counselor and the advisors, what do I need to get into the DPT program? And it was a week by week. How am I getting closer to that? How am I getting closer to that? And I applied at U of M. Flint only, which I know in hindsight sounds insane, but that's where I was going to go. That's what it. I just knew. Dee Schwalm [00:05:17]: I just knew that's what it was going to happen. So I ended up in the PT program and it was wonderful. It's been a wonderful career. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:24]: You went through this graduate school experience and you about 14 years later decided that you weren't done. And many people at the end of a physical therapy degree would say, I'm good, I'm going to do my career. I'm going to stay doing this for the career because it is a terminal degree. But you said, nope, I want to do something different or I want to add on to the degree. So bring me back to that point and what made you decide that you needed to flip the strip? Dee Schwalm [00:05:54]: It definitely was not something that happened initially. When graduating as a pt, I loved working. I still work as a pt. I work prn. I loved it. I was working in outpatient. I worked in sports med. I worked on the weekends to pay off student loans at nursing homes and subacute rehab. Dee Schwalm [00:06:11]: I mean, I worked, I loved it. I love the career. I mean, where else can you have a career where you enter someone, you enter the room with someone and they trust you? You might be their last resort. They're trusting you to not only make a plan of care with them, try to figure out their goals, what they're trying to get back to, but also trust you to physically carry them, if they fall, move them across the room. I mean, it's a very reward starting career. I would say the transition to PA happened as maybe in the last five years, six years working with PAs, and I was very interested in what they did. I was very interested in the medicine side of it. And I was working at a subacute rehab with patients that were COVID positive. Dee Schwalm [00:06:54]: You know, they had multiple traumas, a motor vehicle accident, different things. And I remember hearing Amy York from PT school, which I have heard her say this over and over. You know, by the year 2030, there's expected to be over 80 million people in the United States over the age of 65. And over the last 14 years, I've heard her give this stat in my head over and over. And it's been like kind of a countdown, like, oh, we're getting closer to 2030. There's all these people that are going to need more health care. Are we ready? Are we ready? And then kind of circling back, going, working in the subacute and with the patients and just seeing that we needed more physicians and clinicians in Michigan. Currently we're 800 clinicians short in Michigan and also approaching this number where we're going to have more baby boomers reaching this age. Dee Schwalm [00:07:40]: I was like, who's going to do this? Who's going to be the family medicine doctors? Oh, man. Well, it's not me because I took my science courses seven plus years ago. They imploded. You can't use them again after seven years. I can't go back to college. Not for me. I wonder who will do that. And I kind of tossed it around in my head and I felt pulled to be a pa. Dee Schwalm [00:07:59]: I wondered, you know, maybe I should do that. And I told my husband about it one night and he was like, look it up. You should do that. Look it up. And I was like, oh, I felt foolish looking it up. And I looked of course at the U of M. Flint website because that's where I go to college. Okay. Dee Schwalm [00:08:13]: Didn't look at any other websites. I know I'm a loyalist. I looked it up and I. I will never forget seeing the seven year science course waiver. When I saw that, I was like, oh, there's a spot for me. It's like emotional. But I saw that and I was like, wow, there's a spot for me. So I just chased it. Dee Schwalm [00:08:28]: It was like that moment on two weeks later, I was taking the only class I needed, which was M Biology. I took it at Mott, which when I walked in, the teacher was like, are you here to audit my class? Like, no, I'm just a student. I'm just old sir. So I went back to Mott two days a week. Was still working as a pt. I was getting my microbiology class out of the way. And I was going to apply to PA School. My boss and PT everybody encouraged me. Dee Schwalm [00:08:50]: They said, do it. They gave me the time off. Everybody thought it was great. I applied. I wrote my entire. Looking back, this is kind of. Kind of wild. But the Caspa. Dee Schwalm [00:09:00]: I wrote the entire thing with U of M Flint written in it because it knew it was the only place I was going to apply. I would not give that advice to a student. But that is my path. And I just chased it down. And before I knew it, here I am, and it's over. Like that. Like a fever dream just went by. Gone. Dee Schwalm [00:09:16]: I guess that sums it up. I don't know. Does that make any sense? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:19]: It does. And, you know, one of the things that I think is interesting is that I think what you say, what you're saying here is that you can go into a career and think it's the perfect one for you, but then as life continues, you continue to be inspired, you continue to be intrigued, and you see other ways in which you can impact the world. Now, you pushed yourself. Not everybody would do that. And you pushed yourself to take that leap. And I applaud you for that. Because I think, like I said, not everybody would do that. Sometimes we get complacent, and we're like, we're okay. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:53]: I'm good. But you kind of said to yourself, I want to be better, and I want to impact the world in a different way. And I applaud you for that. Dee Schwalm [00:10:00]: Through this process, I've had some people ask me, and I just really want to, like, make sure I clarify it while I'm here. Well, oh, you left PT because you didn't like it, or it wasn't a good job or you couldn't find a job. You can find a job in PT. You can find a job in 15 minutes in PT. I mean, they are needing people. I felt kind of bad leaving the world of PT because that's needed, too. It's an excellent career. It's a rewarding job. Dee Schwalm [00:10:22]: There's a. A lot of versatility. I just felt like it was kind of hard to come to terms with, but I was like, no, I'm not turning my back on pt. I'm not leaving pt. I'm taking it with me. I'm going to use everything I learned as a PT still and help patients. So I just really felt like it was important because some people, I think, along the way were confused, like, oh, you'd rather be a pa? I'm like, no, I'm also a pa. And both things so that's really exciting. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:45]: Now, one of the things that I think that I'm interested in asking about is this, is that every time that you transition into a new type of education, there's new expectations, there's new ways of learning. And you went from your undergraduate degree into physical therapy. That's one transition where you have to make that transition from being an undergraduate student to a physical therapy student. And then, as I said, you go, you work. Fourteen years later, you're transitioning back to school and being educated in another new way into becoming a physician assistant. So talk to me about in those transitions, those transitions from your Bachelor's to pt, from PT to work and then back to pa, what are some of the things that you had to do at the beginning to set yourself up for success? And what are some of the things that you had to do throughout the entire journey to maintain that success, throughout the entire experience? Dee Schwalm [00:11:45]: I would say when you are leaving undergrad and entering a graduate program, there are portions of undergrad that can be rogue memorization. You can, in a way, from high school and some of undergrad, be trained and memorize, regurgitate the information and repeat. And I realized once I got into the PT program, I was a good student in undergrad, I got good grades, you know, But I realized now, oh, I'm in a graduate program. It's about understanding the information on a 360 degree axis. You have to know everything about this information. There is no more memorization. It's dancing with this information, becoming familiar with it, and also being able to teach it to someone else to ensure that you actually understand the information. So that was something I learned going into graduate school the first time. Dee Schwalm [00:12:39]: I also learned that, you know, a graduate program, the DPT program, it's consuming. Don't make plans, okay? You're going to be busy. You are busy from the very beginning to the very end. And I think I was kind of ready for that in my mindset going back to school. I mean, there was some things that were different in PT school. Get your Scantron and take your test now. Everything's on the computer. I don't use social media. Dee Schwalm [00:13:03]: I have a LinkedIn finally. You know, I haven't used social media since 2012. I just kind of stepped away from it. So I was behind. I didn't know how to navigate these new learning platforms. And I just totally was honest and told other students, I have no idea how to do this. Would one of you be willing to help me? I will buy you lunch. I will do Anything, I'll stay after. Dee Schwalm [00:13:25]: And Rachel Bauer took me under her wing and taught me how to use my computer. You know, all I was using it for was PT programs to write my notes at work, search articles on PubMed. I wasn't using it like these students who grew up through Covid and their undergrad using their computer. So that was a big adjustment, I'd say. When I got to the PA program, I would tell somebody going into grad school, treat it like boot camp. You are going to give this 100%, expect it to take all of your free time. If you get any extra free time, you should be joyful about that. I really treated it like this is my full time job. Dee Schwalm [00:13:58]: Of course, when I got home, I was mom, so I was full time job all over again. But just really understanding that this is not going to be easy. You have the spot. This is your shot. Give it 100%. Someone else wanted your seat. Someone else worked really hard for your seat. So they could be there and just take advantage of the opportunity and just really focus. Dee Schwalm [00:14:20]: You need to set a schedule. That was really hard for me as a mom because while I was with my family, my husband and my children, my two daughters, I felt like, oh no, I should be studying all this material. I should be studying in the first month. I did not have this figured out at all. I was feeling guilt there. And then I'd go to school or be studying and feel like I should be with my family. Oh no. And so I was realizing, like, I can't focus in either place. Dee Schwalm [00:14:43]: If I set a schedule, it gives me freedom. So while I'm in each place, I give a hundred percent at each place. And I would set it down to the hour sometimes. And my girls knew. Oh, they'd come in, it's 6:30, we're gonna eat dinner. Then you're gonna study for 45 minutes and then we're gonna play Barbies for 30 minutes. I mean, they knew, knew. They knew what's happening. Dee Schwalm [00:15:01]: So setting a schedule, that is huge. Giving yourself grace, even the best students, which I'm not. You're gonna fail at something, you're gonna mess up in grad school and you're gonna sit in your chair and go, oh, no, they accidentally let me in. This spot was meant for someone else. Oh, I'm country mouse in the city. What am I doing here? And it's not true. They know what they're doing. They know why they chose you. Dee Schwalm [00:15:24]: They saw potential in you. And you just have to trust the process. That's what they always told us. Trust the process. You know, take it week by week. I'm going full mom on you guys right now. Mom advice. Take it week by week. Dee Schwalm [00:15:37]: Make a schedule, Give yourself some grace and just really just keep at it. Try to exercise, try to eat nutritious foods. Be positive. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:46]: Now, I said, you just completed your PA Degree. Now that you've completed your degree, how do you feel that the graduate degree has prepared you for the next steps that you're about to embark upon? Dee Schwalm [00:15:58]: So starting the program, I had this thought, like, am I really going to be able to do this? Am I really going to be able to do this and do it well? It's not that long of a time, you know, the didactic portion, and then there's like a year of clinicals. Are they going to really be able to transform me even with my clinical experience? So, I mean, I can't imagine how somebody who's 24, I just think they're amazing. These young people going into grad school, they're superheroes. Watching them transform has been so amazing. But the U of M Flint PA program, you have a rigorous didactic portion where you are learning a lot and they're making sure you understand the information. You're not left hanging out to dry. You're meeting with your advisor twice a semester or more. That's just the baseline. Dee Schwalm [00:16:44]: And then when you have your clinicals, I feel really prepared because they were in all kinds of settings. You know, I had two family medicine, one month each. So two months of family medicine. I had two months of internal medicine. I was at a level one trauma at Corwell Grand Rapids. I said, hey, I'll go over there. It's only an hour, 10 minutes. Like, let's go. Dee Schwalm [00:17:02]: I loved that. I got a clinical at the Behavioral Health Urgent Care in Flint. I had women's health. I had pediatrics at Mott Children's Health center in Flint. That was a great experience. I worked in neurosurgery at Hurley Hospital. I mean, I was doing a craniectomy, and I thought, who am I right now? This, like, helping? Of course I wasn't doing it. But they prepare you. Dee Schwalm [00:17:24]: You have to trust the process and know that when you get to the finish line, you're going to feel confident, you're going to feel ready, and you really could go into any area and learn and grow. You know, it's just great. It's. I feel prepared, I feel excited. For me, it's family medicine and internal medicine that really, I'm the most excited about. And I just want to first take a nap and then I want to start now. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:48]: Talk to me about you transitioned from one professional career into now another. And as you said, you're building upon the one to the next. And as you go through these type of programs, whether it be physical therapy, physician assistant, they are rigorous programs. Both of these programs are full time programs. You're putting yourself out there, you're jumping in with both feet and you get pushed from day one. And there are definitely times in programs like these, but also any graduate program where you may feel some imposter syndrome, you may, like you just said, say, I don't know if I can do this. Talk to me about that. As you transition from being a physical therapist to jumping back in as a student, to becoming a physician assistant. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:31]: Did you ever face imposter syndrome or self doubt during either graduate studies? And how did you handle it? Dee Schwalm [00:18:37]: I absolutely did. And I think every student does and will and maybe should feel imposter syndrome. Maybe it keeps you honest, maybe it keeps you hard working. Maybe I felt it. And I think when you come face to face with imposter syndrome, you have a couple decisions you can make. What am I going to do about it? I just going to shrink down and shrink away from this, this, and I don't like the way this feels, so I'm just not going to move forward with this. Or are you going to say, what is it that is making me feel imposter syndrome? Is it because I don't actually know the material? Maybe I know it, but I don't know how to explain it. So I think I don't know it and really take a step back and think, why do I have this feeling? And then try to crush it. Dee Schwalm [00:19:18]: Try to learn more, practice more. I honestly felt it was strange going back to school because I was older than some of my professors, those young ladies. I didn't really feel at first a connection with the students and I didn't really feel I was at the level of the professors, obviously. So I was just kind of my own little Switzerland. And that made me feel an imposter syndrome almost everywhere I went, like, I'm not one of you and I'm not one of you. But then like the first week I decided this is my spot, this is for me, this is my path. And I'm not gonna spend time and energy feeling this way. I am here to learn just like everyone else. Dee Schwalm [00:19:54]: There was some internal pressure. The professors never put pressure on me to know more than anyone else or Single out. Like, it wasn't like that. I was just one of the group, which I really appreciated because I really needed that. I would say I felt the internal pressure that, am I going to be expected to know everything? Am I going to be expected to know everything faster? Am I supposed to catch on to this right away? And that really wasn't the case. They gave me the same opportunity to learn as everyone else. And that really helped. Once I realized that, it kind of helped me crush that. Dee Schwalm [00:20:29]: That imposter syndrome feeling. And then also just realizing, like, this is my spot. It doesn't matter what anybody thinks about this. Oh, if they think it's strange or it was just really, this is my spot, and I'm going to take it. I'm going to chase this down. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:42]: And some graduate students like yourself are going through graduate school while they're balancing being a parent. They have young families. They're trying to better themselves while they're also being mom, dad, et cetera. I know you have two young daughters yourself, and you were going through that PA program while you were being mom, and you talked about that a little bit. Talk to me about the message you're trying to share with your kids about following your passions and your. And your dreams. And how do you talk to them about that? Dee Schwalm [00:21:14]: Well, they were totally supportive of me going back to school. My husband was totally supportive, which I feel very lucky. At first, when I was starting the program, I didn't realize. I mean, I always talked about it with him, but I'd say involving them in it made it more special for them. Every time after a test, it was, it's test day. You know, Mom's gonna study even more over the next week, but we're all gonna celebrate on Friday. And I remember, like, the first month, like, if I didn't do well on a test, I almost felt like I was letting them down. And I remember not telling him one time, like, oh, my gosh, I didn't do as well on this test as I thought I was gonna do. Dee Schwalm [00:21:52]: And they saw me studying, would they then be, like, discouraged? And I don't know when it clicked, but I thought, no, I want to teach them how to be successful and work hard, but I also want to teach them what it's like when you fall on your face. And so I told them that didn't work out. And so you get to watch how I'm going to behave when something doesn't work out. Do I give up? Do I keep going? Do I work harder? Do I give myself some Grace and thinking about how they were watching me made me be more positive because it's wiring them for how do I respond when I don't succeed and I don't know what path they'll choose. Maybe they'll choose college, maybe they won't, I don't know. But I want them, whatever they do, to be able to fall on their face and go, that's all right, I got a lot left and get right back up. So that was important to me. That was huge. Dee Schwalm [00:22:39]: And just involving them and you know, okay, it's the end of the semester, we're going to save up and go to a hotel for a night or two and just try to reward them because they make sacrifices to too. Even though they weren't saying it, they were making sacrifices. Even though I'm sitting next to him on the couch studying with my headphones on, I'm still not as engaging as I would have been if I had him off. So I understood that would try to make time for him and go for walks and how was your day? I read this thing, the 21 minute rule where you're supposed to try to do seven minutes of quality time in the morning and afternoon and evening with your children and just look at them and just listen. And I think just trying to be engaging with them and keep them involved in your, your, in your path of grad school will make everybody in the family feel like they achieved something. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:26]: And as you think back to either of the graduate school experiences that you've gone through, what's one thing that you wish that someone had told you before you started either physical therapy or before you started the PA program? Dee Schwalm [00:23:41]: That it was a good idea that, that I was going to pray every day because I did. So that was very helpful. I wish somebody would have told me that because that was a huge help for me. I don't know that I would have been successful without prayer. I think. I don't know if there's something specific someone can tell you, just that it's going to be time consuming. But it will, it will pass and it will go by quickly. Even though it feels some weeks like it's dragging out, it will go by quickly. Dee Schwalm [00:24:12]: You know, you will get to the finish line and even though you don't feel prepared by the time you get to the finish line, you will. You have to just trust that you're going to continue growing, not going to walk in and be the boss. You're not going to walk in and be a pt. You're not going to walk in and be a pa. I'm not going to walk into my new job and be great at it. I need to find somewhere where they can teach me and I can learn. And that's just, just be okay with that. Be okay with that. Dee Schwalm [00:24:40]: I think that's. I wish somebody would have told Young D that before she got into PT school the first time. So. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:24:49]: And as you look back to your graduate education and you think of others that are thinking about going to graduate school, whether it be in the sciences, in business, in some other area, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Dee Schwalm [00:25:08]: Are you focused? Do you have a written out, bulleted list? What are you going to do to get towards this goal this week, this month? And I love to cross off a list. I might write make the list so I can cross off, make the list, make a list, write it out, Keep focused. Because you could easily get lost in time and months go by and you haven't moved forward. Everything might not work out just as you planned. And it might send you in a different direction. You might not get into the graduate program that you wanted to, but maybe that opens another door. You just have to keep your mind open and keep working towards your own success. And you're the only person who writes your story. Dee Schwalm [00:25:47]: It doesn't matter where you're from. It doesn't matter if your family went to college. It doesn't matter what your past was. You know, if you want to write your story and you want college in it, then chase after it. Then make it happen. Find a way, change jobs, keep working at it until you find a way. Because it's probably your calling. It's probably what you're supposed to do. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:07]: Well, Dee, I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your journey today. And I know it's not done. It'd be interesting to see where you land here after you get that next position. I know you just passed your boards. Congratulations. And I'm really excited to be able to see what the future has in store for you. But I really, truly appreciate your time and I wish you the best. Dee Schwalm [00:26:31]: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:33]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, Visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to do be a Victor in Grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
How Grad School Sparked Two Startups: Michael McGetrick's Story
Graduate school is often described as a journey—full of challenges, opportunities, and transformative experiences. In this episode of "Victors in Grad School," host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Michael McGetrick, the co-founder of Spark451, to explore what it really takes to succeed in graduate education and beyond. Whether you're at the start of your academic path, mid-way through your studies, or reflecting on your professional future, you'll find Michael's story both inspiring and relatable. A Story of Growth, Change, and Connecting the Dots From his early days as an English and Studio Art major at Brooklyn College, Michael McGetrick recognized the value of pairing creativity with analytical thinking. The transition from traditional design to the digital age led him to realize the profound business impact of his work—a realization that inspired him to pursue graduate studies. By earning a Master's in Management at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, he intentionally sought to bridge creativity, data, and technology, setting the stage for a career at the intersection of these worlds. But the learning didn't stop there. Motivated by a desire for further growth and transformation, Michael McGetrick returned to earn an MBA. He credits this decision—and the people he met along the way—as a catalyst for founding successful companies like Spark451 and Element451. For Michael McGetrick, graduate school was about more than coursework; it was about building connections, embracing new challenges, and transforming into a leader capable of navigating today's fast-changing technological landscape. Balancing Life, Work, and Study One of the episode's resonant themes is balance. Michael McGetrick candidly discusses the realities of juggling academics, a demanding career, and family responsibilities. Whether it was studying alongside his wife or burning the midnight oil after his children went to bed, he emphasizes the importance of commitment, open communication, and finding excitement in the field you choose. Advice for Prospective Graduate Students If you're contemplating graduate school, Michael McGetrick urges you to stay curious, engage deeply with your professors and peers, and draw inspiration from cutting-edge ideas in your discipline. Graduate education, he notes, can truly be a lever for personal and professional transformation. Ready to be inspired by Michael's full journey and advice? Listen to the latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" and take the next step on your own graduate school adventure! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. You know, every week I love being able to be on this journey with you. And I call it a journey because it truly is a journey. No matter if you're at the very beginning, just starting to think about graduate school and maybe it's the right time, maybe it's not. Maybe you've put in that first application, maybe you've gotten accepted, maybe you're in graduate school no matter where you are. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:41]: It is truly a journey because there are things that you can do along the way to be able to prepare yourself, but also to find success in that journey that you'll be on. Where you start may not be where you end up in regards to the through line of graduate school and into the careers that you want to go into, but that's why this podcast is here. This podcast is here to help you to be able to start seeing things in different ways, for you to be able to learn new things and to be able to see how others have been able to find success in their own journeys. That's why every week I bring you someone new individuals that have had graduate school experiences that may be like yours, but maybe very, very different than yours as well. The ultimate goal here is that you have an opportunity to be able to learn, to grow, and to take something out of every episode, whether it's one thing, whether it's 10 things. I want you to be able to have some tools for your toolbox that'll help you to be able to find success sooner. Today we got another great guest. Michael McGetrick is with us today and Michael is the co founder of Spark451. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:51]: It is a company that works in higher education, working with different universities in higher education. We'll talk a little bit about that today, too, about how his own graduate school led him to what he's doing today. But I'm really excited to have him here and for him to share some of his own journey with you. Michael, thanks so much for being here today. Michael McGetrick [00:02:07]: Chris, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. This is a topic that is very close to my heart. So excited for this conversation and to share some of my experience with your audience. So thank you so much for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:20]: Well, I really appreciate you being here. And I'm going to turn the clock back in time because I want to go way back. I want to go all the way back to when you were in that undergraduate space. And I know you did your undergraduate degree at Brooklyn College. You got a bachelor's degree in English and studio art and then you ended up leaving, going off and. But you continued your education in a number of different ways, whether it was through a formal graduate degree or other educational opportunities that allowed for you to be able to grow and learn. I wanted you to take me back to your days at Brooklyn College and talk to me about what lit that spark of continuing education and what made you decide when you first decided that you wanted to go and take that next step, take that next step in your education beyond the bachelor's that you wanted to do that. Michael McGetrick [00:03:10]: Well, it's a fairly interesting story. You've nailed correctly my history. I did go to Brooklyn College as a commuter. I majored in English. And did you Art with a focus on graphic design, which were two, I would say complimentary majors. To be able to communicate really well with the written word as well as using graphics and visuals. And that was like a nice complimentary skill set. A lot of, a lot of the world was changing at the time from manual paste ups. Michael McGetrick [00:03:41]: If anyone listening to this could have pictured and imagine there was. There was a time when any like communication that was put together was done with razor blades and glue and they would put paste up, you know, words and typography and paste up photos next to each other. Of course now it's done all with computer and it was transitioning literally at that moment when I was doing that work. So as much as the world is had multiple transition points, that was one of the big ones. And so with that developing skill, I was able to be walked into an ad agency in New York and to the studio by my professor, Professor Richard Navin. And he said, oh, this is McG, he's really good, you should hire him. And they hired me on the spot. And that was like a really nice thing for a professor to do for me and got me started in my career literally that way. Michael McGetrick [00:04:31]: So I spent quite a bit of time growing and learning. Advertising and technology was changing and certainly the web took off and websites were a big part of the work that I was doing. And I had this realization that being first focused on the craft design, storytelling, user experience. But over time I noticed something important, that the work I was doing wasn't just creative, it was really, really directly influencing Business outcomes, campaigns that sometimes would affect sales or if it was for a university, affect enrollments, websites that affected conversion rates, the sign decisions that impacted the revenue for the organizations that I was working with. And so that realization really shifted my perspective and I became less interested in just executing the work and more interested in understanding the systems that were underneath it, how the decisions were made, how these organizations were growing, and, you know, how data and technology, which were kind of like mysterious things to me but were becoming more tangible as I was using them, and how they shape the strategy of an organization. And that's really what led me to graduate school. To answer your question, I made this intentional decision to study management, but within an engineering school. I wanted to surround myself with a more quantitative, systems oriented approach to business because that's the kind of work I was doing, doing E commerce websites, selling things on the web, connecting to inventory systems. Michael McGetrick [00:05:59]: It wasn't just about leaving creativity behind, it was pairing it with something more analytical, with a lot of thinking and innovation behind it. And ultimately that combination really defines what I do today and my work in higher education, marketing, enrollment strategy. I'm constantly sitting on that intersection of creativity, data and technology. So whether it's building some digital campaigns, looking at student behavior, mapping out student journeys, or now working with AI driven engagement, you know, the goal is always the same, that I want creative thinking and measurable outcomes. I want those two things to intersect at all times. So in a lot of ways, graduate school gave me the tools to move upstream in the value chain, not just to create the work, but to help shape the strategy behind it. And that whole experience has been incredibly valuable, especially now as we go through another technological revolution where AI is reshaping how the institutions I work with connect with their customers, connect with their students. And I think that going forward from a graduate school perspective, there's going to be a lot of value for the listeners. Michael McGetrick [00:07:06]: Think about how they might want to bridge different interests of theirs. Creativity, technology, business thinking. You know, the people who can connect those things together in the AI age are the ones who are really going to be able to drive some impact. So I think it's an interesting story that's kind of my, my big picture of what drove me there. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:22]: So talk to me a bit about. You're in New York, there's a lot of universities in the New York area. You ended up deciding to go to NYU Tandon School of Engineering, as you said, focusing on looking at management, but through a bit more of a technological lens. And I'm sure there were Other programs you probably could have chosen along the way. Talk to me about the process that you went through when you made that decision to go and get that first master's degree in management. What made you decide on nyu? Michael McGetrick [00:07:54]: Yeah, so I think I saw Steve Jobs give that commencement speech at Stanford about connecting the dots. And he basically laid out the story. It's, you know, he. He studied calligraphy at Reed College, which led him to value typography to be great on the Mac. And other things happened in his life that led to the path that led to Apple. And so I started thinking of, like, you know, hey, I've got sort of this. This technology movement that's happening, and I'm dealing bases and like, learning it on the fly and not really sure everything that's happening contextually with it and working with engineers and developers and business people. And so I said, you know, I feel like I'm on the technology side of business here. Michael McGetrick [00:08:38]: And so that's where I want to approach my graduate education. I think I need to be on the technology side of business. So I looked around and some schools have great business programs and some have great technology programs. And I said, I. I want a comb of both. And that's where a engineering school that had a management department was very attractive to me. And the fact that you can study with engineers was a big part of it. But I will say there was one thing that gave me pause, right? It's like, did I belong? I think a lot of your listeners might have that question, do I belong here? And also, I was coming back after being out of school for maybe eight years. Michael McGetrick [00:09:17]: And so I had left all my study habits behind. I had forgotten how to solve for X with math. And like, literally, I'm like, when started taking courses, had to, like, get some tutorials on algebra and. And lead everything leading up to calculus to reawaken my mind to remember the high school math I had taken. So those questions of will I belong in this organization? Will I belong in this school? They came up and, you know, ultimately I think, you know, you can find your place wherever you might wind up. You discover that you do belong if you put in the work and people appreciate that and. And a community gets formed. So I did wind up in the right place. Michael McGetrick [00:09:55]: And I think it worked out very well for me. And I apprec. Experience I had there. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:00]: And you talked about the fact that it was about eight years from the point in which you got your bachelor's. It went to getting that master's degree, and then almost another Another five years down the road from there, you decided to go back again to get another Master's degree, also from nyu. And not everybody decides to make that choice to continue getting another degree after they get two degrees. Talk to me about that. And what made you decide that getting an MBA on top of your Ms. In was something that would help you to move further forward? Michael McGetrick [00:10:34]: Yeah, so I think that was sort of an existential moment. I was at a point in my career where I felt like I needed to take another leap. I was kind of doing the same thing for a while, running an agency and like kind of remaining in the same spot. It was going very well. But what was the next thing I wanted to hit career wise. So for me, I look to higher education for, as a transformation, a transformer, a catalyst. Right. I say, okay, like you want to become something new, you need to have different inputs. Michael McGetrick [00:11:08]: So for me, the MBA was an attractive program for a couple of reasons. First, it just so happened that if you had a Master's in management, they would transfer a certain number of credits into the MBA program, which was a very flexible, nice offering that they had. And second, it was a real kind of transformational time. Social media was taking off again, another technological revolution taking place. So there was good timing there, all the Web 2.0 stuff happening. So there was a convergence of factors. And then just the. There were a few professors there that I had become friendly with that were running the program and I just knew I wanted to be there with them. Michael McGetrick [00:11:50]: So all these things aligned to say, hey, this is a great idea. Let's, let's go into the MBA program at the NYU School of Engineering and see what happens. And if I were to continue, I'd say it was incredibly transformational. Once again, I happen to be in school with, with some really talented individuals in the program, people who are doing incredible things in their day to day work. It tended to be people who were a little bit older, like average age of 30 plus. And, and everybody was a successful professional in their own right. And so I got to meet and do projects with some great people and I took a course that was very transformational, a course in entrepreneurship with this professor named Bruce Niswander. And he was the head of the incubator at nyu and he was responsible for launching all sorts of companies. Michael McGetrick [00:12:42]: So he wasn't just a scholar, but he was an applied researcher, an applied professor, and he really practiced what he preached. So he had us create companies and come up with cash flow statements and he made it very tangible and real. And every part of the entrepreneurship process exposed to us from a person who practiced it. I happened to meet a classmate and become very close with him, a software engine engineer. His name was Artist Kadu. And we became really close and we had done a project together and we sort of, sort of say, hey, you know, we ever decided to start a company, we should do it together. And so that was sort of like the beginning of the idea of what eventually became Spark451, which is the company I founded with him and another NYU engineering grad named Steve Kersh. And it started in that classroom, you know, really from a vision of mutual ideas. Michael McGetrick [00:13:35]: Artis was a software engineer, and he had lots of ideas about higher education software, and I had ideas about higher education marketing. And Steve was higher education enrollment expert. And the three of us converged and formulated the idea to start Spark 51. And it was purely from that graduate experience that startup became a viable entity and led to another startup named element451, which is also an extremely successful company, and that artists eventually spun off and became the CEO of. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:05]: So talk to me a little bit about what you learned in the program. You just talked about the connections that you made and how those connections led to two different companies that spun off from that education and those connections that you built in that education. And now that you look at the degrees that you did receive for yourself and you think back to what you learned in those degrees, how do you feel that the graduate degrees that you received prepared you for the work that you are still doing on a day to day basis? Michael McGetrick [00:14:39]: So I heard a great quote once that said, students learn from what they think and what they do, and only from what they think and what they do. And so the graduation I received, it had a lot of great subject matters that converged. But the thing that was transformational for me was I was purely liberal arts leading up to that points, right. I thought any problem could be solved by more messaging, more creativity, more marketing, more advertising. And I realized that there was so much to the equation by working in the field, but now actually sort of understanding it. And the course that really did it for me was managerial economics. The idea that you can model the future, right? And you can model any particular system in the world and create inputs that lead to outputs. And so you kind of start to connect the dots that any kind of business system has a whole series of inputs, and we learned mathematical equations from modeling them. Michael McGetrick [00:15:40]: And so it kind of brought all these disparate systems together and, and created this new shift in My mind and thinking that, yeah, you know, you can, you can manage these very large things by thinking about them from a system perspective, from a model perspective, and you can break them down into individual components and try to optimize them. And that became my, my way of thinking about managing organizations and, and managing systems and managing very complex projects that they're, you know, there are series of inputs and outputs and you can manage those inputs individually, you can delegate them individually, and that's the way large organizations work and trying to optimize them. All of the necessary data that has to come into those equations and all the statistical analysis that can be. Be applied across them and you learn these things across different classes in quantitative analysis and, and statistics. So like, I had this whole new tool set that was available to me to make me a much more effective professional. And these programs, I give them credit for transforming me, like literally changing who I was in the world to a new person. You can change someone or you can transform them. And I think the most valuable graduate programs create that sense of transformation that I. Michael McGetrick [00:17:02]: New person coming out of this. Maybe not a new person to the people that love you and your family and your, you know, your spouse, but certainly a new person as you show up in, in the world professionally. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:14]: Just talked about your spouse or your family. And as you go through graduate school, there's a lot of balance that has to happen for you to be able to be successful as a student. But you're also wearing many hats as a professional, personally, with your family, friends, or others. Talk to me about balance for yourself. And how did you find that balance as you were going through graduate school that allowed for you to be able to find the success that you wanted in the experience that you went through? Michael McGetrick [00:17:44]: Yeah, well, I'm very glad you asked that. I have sort of a couple of different perspectives there. The first degree, I was a married man with no kids yet, so I felt like I was able to balance that by sitting at the table at night doing my reading with my wife next to me and going through the problems. Very large problem sets, sometimes operations management. You'd have like many, many pages of equations to solve and just like literally sharing with her what I was reading and going through and said Billy Joel song, tell her about it. That was sort of my, my approach to putting in time with her while actually doing studying, just making sure that she was involved in knowing what I was going through and what I was learning. And we'd have interesting conversations around it. And so it was fun. Michael McGetrick [00:18:31]: It's very fond Memory of those times in our first apart and going through large textbooks of manager economics and operations management. And then later when I got the MBA program, I had two children at the time and so that became even more difficult. But it was a matter of commitment to all the above and just you didn't want to do anything in half measures, right? So you want it to be continue your professional output, handle your work very well, your full time job, but also still be a great parent and still do excellent work in your MBA program and go all out. So that was my commitment to just go all out in all three. So cut back in a little sleep, Chris. But hit every project really hard. Fit, fit in everything I could. Putting in some late nights after the kids go to sleep to, to get it done. Michael McGetrick [00:19:16]: And just that commitment that you were building towards something that was leading toward a better future and better for these kids and for your spouse. So it was just a full commitment to it all and just, you know, maybe sharing that idea with your spouse that this is something you're committed to and you're going to give it your best on all fronts and if you fall on one of them, so be it. You'll make it on the next week and give it your best shot all the way through. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:41]: Earlier you'd mentioned that when you went to graduate school the first time, it had been eight years. It was five years after that when you went to get that second master's degree. And whenever I talk to individuals about graduate school, there is a transition. There's a transition going from one, one type of degree to another type of degree, going from bachelor's to master's. You went from a very different type of bachelor's degree into a master's degree in a completely different type of area. And there is a transition that you go through in from one degree to the next and understanding expectations and learning what you need to do to be able to be successful. Take me back and talk to me a little bit about those things that you had to do as you were transitioning into graduate school and figuring out the, just that beginning part of it, but also as you were going through those graduate school experiences, what you had to do to again find success as you were going through that journey. Michael McGetrick [00:20:35]: Yeah, reflecting back on it, it was a fairly rough transition in the first semester, just getting back into reading and assignments and, and as I mentioned before, doing things mathematically, solving, solving math problems again. Ah, I thought, I put this aside and thought I got past all this, but here I am again doing it. So yeah, that was a fairly rough transition and certainly I needed to get back on the path. And the other was, it was a new vocabulary. And I, you know, whatever, whatever area of study you pursue, there's always going to be that set of vocabulary that you need to become comfortable with. And so I think the, the program did a great job by forcing us to make multiple presentations to the class. So you had to prepare, you had to deliver the presentation, use the words, talk about it, use the vocabulary. And so, so after that initial, rough start of getting in and dealing with this new set of vocabulary, and again, a lot of the things were engineering project management, for example, the engineers seem to have a much better handle on it than I did and, and was taught in a very engineering type way and, and taught in the context of construction and civil engineering projects, which were completely foreign to me. Michael McGetrick [00:21:54]: But you dig in, you ask questions, you work in teams, you engage your classmates. And, and I think that's another part of the graduate experience that enriches your experiences, just working with diverse teams and groups of people who have different experiences and share that so you can learn as much from your classmates as you can from your professors. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:15]: Speaking of professors, I know that you also are an adjunct faculty member at a couple different institutions and you've taught classes along the way. So you're interacting with students at different points in their own careers and talking to them about the journeys that they're on. Talk to me about the learning that you have there and the conversations that you've had with students. And what do you tell students now as they may come to you and talk to you about graduate school or future education for themselves? Michael McGetrick [00:22:44]: First of all, teaching as an adjunct was something that I started out doing to make some extra money to help with the mortgage payments, to help with the rent. And I've continued to do it to this day because it's become a, you know, a passion project. Right. Like I think most adjuncts at some of these professional schools are, you know, just do it because they love the experience, they love working with students, and they love the type of interaction and engagement that we get and sharing our professional experience with the next generation. And that's what it's become for me. So, you know, I think of graduate education as, on a couple of ways when I'm, when I'm advising students. Like, I think first that if you're going to go right after undergrad, like you've had all these different variety of courses you've had to take, you might have a core curriculum at your College, you may have your major, you may have a second major, you may have a minor. So you have all these really different types of courses along with your major. Michael McGetrick [00:23:39]: And as you become a senior from junior into senior year, you start really understanding that vocabulary. You're starting to really get into the groove of that particular field. And so you have this incredible momentum that you could carry directly into a graduate program that will lead to your success in that graduate program. So I think that's one advantage of going into a master's program right out of undergrad is like you're just ear in the groove, you'll get it done on, you'll accelerate your learning and you can just sort of truly become a master of that field. And that's one way of looking at it. The other is I did appreciate for business education, I think you really should hold off a couple years and work for a few years. If you're going to get a master's in business or an mba, I think it's much more valuable to go out and get a few years of experience and then really you'll appreciate and apply the learning much more rapidly if you have some business context, a few years of experience. So that's why the best MBA program programs require that. Michael McGetrick [00:24:36]: In addition, they want to, they want to have better starting salaries for their graduates, you know, self serving in that. But I think it's, it served the students well to just have that contextual business experience. And then finally I think graduate education can be that transformative experience to change you from one thing to another. And if you're looking for a change in career, if you're looking to enter a different field, if you felt like your undergraduate major was something that isn't going to connect you directly to a career, I think a master's program can be that catalyst to connect you to a whole new career. And there are so many programs that do that. So no matter what your undergraduate program is, if you feel you wasted your money, if you feel like you wasted your time, you can find a graduate program out there that will connect you into a lucrative, high paying career. The, the possibilities are infinite and out there. So definitely think about graduate education as that, that lever to trans that career switch, if you will. Michael McGetrick [00:25:35]: No doubt about it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:25:35]: And I guess finally as you look back at your own graduate experiences or graduate school experiences and you're talking to individuals that are thinking about graduate school, whether it be in business, in technology, in whatever area it might be, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would Help them find success sooner. Michael McGetrick [00:25:57]: When I think about my own experience, I feel like I was super excited about the graduate program I was going to undertake. And I had read a few business books that got me excited and sort of connected to the narrative of business. And so if I were going to give some quick advice to someone who was looking for launching their success, I would just say, you know, make sure you're up to speed on the latest thinking in your field. Make sure you're. Before you start the program, read some of the more interesting literature that is in your field. Tap into the, let's say, the strongest, most appreciated minds in your field and read their books, read their literature, read their articles to get you excited about what's happening in the field and what's going to learn. Because I think excitement and enthusiasm are the things that are going to lead to your success. And that is going to be something that sustains you when the work gets hard, when you have other obligations in life and it might be easy to take a semester off. Michael McGetrick [00:27:08]: So just try to maintain that excitement and enthusiasm about the program you're going to undertake. Second, your professors are there because they have a passion for what they do. They are dedicated to your success. They've devoted their lives and their careers to produce successful students, and ultimately that's what they want. While they give you hard work and hard assignments and hard projects to do, do they do ultimately want your success. So tap into their capabilities. Tap into them as a resource. They don't want you to fail. Michael McGetrick [00:27:40]: They want you to succeed in a big way. And furthermore, they can have incredible networks that can connect you to opportunities that you may not think are out there, whether professional connections, research, so on and so forth. And I would say, you know, getting involved at the graduate level, making, making friends, making connections. If you do an online program, there's still community to be had. If you're on campus, make sure you're taking the time to not just go to class and do the work, but to really engage with your fellow students and build connections that are going to be there for life as they have been for me. So get that sustaining interest and excitement about the program, tap into your professors and that and build your community in whatever form that takes, whether on campus or online. And I think you're going to have an amazing time in a graduate program. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:28:33]: Well, Michael, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. And I know it's not over, your journey continues. But I truly appreciate you sharing all of this today and the things that you've learned along the way, and I wish you all the best. Michael McGetrick [00:28:47]: Thank you Chris. It's been a pleasure and good luck to everyone out there. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:28:50]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Resilience and Reinvention: Dr. Jeff Yackley's Graduate School Journey
Graduate school is a unique and often challenging journey, filled with twists, turns, and transformative experiences. In the latest episode of "Victors in Grad School," host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Dr. Jeff Yackley, Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan-Flint, to unpack the realities of graduate life and share powerful insights for current and aspiring grad students. From the outset, Dr. Jeff Yackley takes listeners on a personal journey that began with dreams of medical school and shifted through industry, eventually landing with passion in academia and research. Through these major transitions, Dr. Jeff Yackley underscores the importance of introspection—the ability to honestly assess one's motivations and strengths—and resiliency, the determination to keep moving forward even when plans change or setbacks occur. A striking moment comes as Dr. Jeff Yackley describes grappling with self-doubt, particularly when struggling to publish his first research paper. Despite repeated rejections, he found strength by relying on his support system—advisors, labmates, and trusted faculty—and by redefining success on his own terms. Classroom teaching became a powerful wellspring of confidence, "I was getting really great teaching evaluations, I was still getting positive feedback from students," he shares, highlighting that encouragement can come from unexpected places (10:51). Throughout the episode, the theme of connection is evident. Dr. Jeff Yackley credits the guidance of a faculty mentor for seeing potential in him and encouraging a path in research and teaching. He emphasizes the value of getting to know your professors, participating in lab groups, and building relationships with peers—essential for both professional growth and personal resilience. Time management, another common grad school struggle, is addressed with practical advice. Dr. Jeff Yackley shares strategies like breaking tasks into manageable pieces and avoiding perfectionism, admitting, "things don't have to be perfect, they have to be good enough" (13:48). The episode closes with actionable tips for those considering graduate school: deepen your curiosity, go beyond assignment requirements, and embrace opportunities to connect with faculty and peers. Whether your interest is in computer science, business, or any other field, Dr. Jeff Yackley's journey is proof that success is shaped by resilience, self-reflection, and the relationships you build along the way. Interested in more insights like these? Tune in to "Victors in Grad School" and start building your own toolbox for graduate success! TRANSCRIPT Dr.Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. Every week, I love being able to have a conversation with you, for you to be here, to learn more, and to be working toward that goal or those goals that you've set for yourself. You are truly on a journey. You're on a journey through that graduate education that you want to achieve. And I call it a journey because it is a journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:39]: Every person that goes to graduate school is on a little bit of a different path, is on a little bit of a different journey. But along the way, there are things that you can do to be able to be successful in that journey, and that's why this podcast exists every week. I love being able to introduce you to different people with different experiences. And from those experiences, my hope is that you'll take a few nuggets, you'll take some things out of every conversation to be able to add some tools to your toolbox and be able to do what you can, to be able to move yourself along and find that success sooner. Today we've got another great guest. Dr. Jeff Yackley is with us today. And Dr. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:18]: Yackley is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan Flint in our College of Innovation and Technology. And I'm really excited to be able to have him chat with you to and for us to learn a little bit more about his own experience. Jeff, thanks so much for being here today. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:01:32]: Thanks, Chris. It's an honor to be here and to be able to share my experiences. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:35]: Well, I really appreciate you being here and for sharing this today. And I guess I want to go back in time a little bit because I know that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and then at some point during that journey, you made a decision. You made a decision that at some point that a along the way you were going to continue your education, and you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan and then went over to the University of Michigan, Dearborn, but then you continued on and you decided to continue on to get the master's and the doctorate, both from the University of Michigan, Dearborn as well. Bring me back to that early point where you were going through that undergraduate degree and you said, you know what? I'm not done. And I want to continue what was Going through your head. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:02:23]: Well, that's quite a story, Chris. I guess to start when I graduate, graduated from U of M, Ann Arbor in biochemistry, I had dreams of going to medical school, and I tried to force the route, went to a Caribbean school. And when I did go to a hospital, I found I didn't like dealing with all of the things that you would expect in a medical environment, all of the horrible pain and suffering that can occur in a hospital. And so I talked with the dean of the medical school, actually, and he had suggested if I had not wanted to go down this path, what would I pursue? And he was suggesting law school at the time. And I said I didn't think that was for me. And I had this early love of computers in high school that I never really got to explore. And so I looked for an opportunity to be able to pursue that. And so I went to the U of M Dearborn. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:03:05]: And while at Dearborn, I had made some connections with several faculty members, and I must have had three or four classes with one individual. And we really worked well together. And I ended up taking some leadership positions in a couple of the classes on some significant term projects. And when I graduated, I would say, in computer science, it's pretty common that a lot of students don't go to grad school. And I was no different. I wanted to jump right in and see what industry was like. I had done an internship, and after a short time in industry, I really wasn't feeling that the current situation I was in, how do I say it, they were using outdated technologies. And I really felt that if I didn't stay current, particularly with the growth in AI, that I was going to fall behind. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:03:48]: And I really wanted to jump careers again to go back from the current development environment I was working in to more of an automotive placement, since I figured being in Michigan, that was a really great career move. But when I started my master's degree and I really had this idea that I wanted to keep pursuing this graduate education, I was approached actually by that instructor for my undergraduate degree. And he had suggested that U of M Dearborn was now opening a PhD program and it might be something I'd be interested in. And he thought I had some qualifications that would make me well suited for it. We had worked previously together, and I really respected him and really enjoyed really exploring the topics in his class together through his instruction. And so I decided, yeah, let's make a third career switch and go from medicine to software development to now looking at more of an academic role and pursuing Research, and that's really where I entered PhD program. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:45]: Now, at every level of education, there are transitions that you go through. And you went through a number of transitions. You went from undergrad to med school, from med school back to undergrad, from grad, from undergrad to master's and then to doctorate. And at every level, there's different expectations, there's different perspectives, there's different demands from faculty, different demands on reading, different demands on lots of different things. And you have to maneuver through those transitions. You have to figure out, what does it mean to find success as I jump from one to the next. Talk to me about those transitions for yourself. And what did you have to do as you transitioned into those different graduate school experiences to find success? And what did you have to do throughout those different experiences, through the journey in those different programs, programs and experiences to sustain that success throughout the entirety? Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:05:41]: I really think there's been two things, which is really resiliency and also introspection. And I think before you make the move, you really have to decide, is this what you want? Is this what you are really looking for in terms of an experience and being honest with yourself about where you're at and what you want to do and what your current abilities are? Back when I was in medical school, it was a very hard decision to give up that career path and not keep pushing forward. And I must have spent several months just thinking about what I was going to do. And I would say anyone looking to make a major career decision like that should, of course, spend a large amount of time thinking about it. But then also there is that resiliency aspect where in your graduate education, things aren't always going to go to plan. You might struggle on a research project or getting a certain research paper published at a journal or conference. And all along that way, you have to keep pushing it forward. You have to keep willing to put in the hours to revise and adapt, listen to feedback that you get, and just keep pushing yourself ahead to be better. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:39]: Yeah, you definitely have to do that. You have to go through that and figure that out for yourself many times to find out what it means to find that resiliency and pick yourself up as you go along. Because there will be times that. Where things are hard and you may have to push through, or you have to pivot and figure out, as you said in your medical school experience, that it wasn't the right fit. Now, you talked about the fact that a faculty member saw something in you and that they invested in you and encouraged you to think Think differently about what you were doing and what that end goal was. Talk to me about that. Because as you said, you entered your secondary graduate school experience in computer science thinking you wanted to do one thing, but then when you had that investment in that faculty member that was trying to encourage you, talk to me about that thought process for yourself. Because I'm sure that it wasn't an easy, aha, yes, this is exactly what I want to do. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:39]: It probably had some introspection, as you mentioned, that you had to go through. So talk to me about that. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:07:44]: Yeah, so it was another big decision, really trying to decide did I want to stay in industry or basically commit to this more academic role. And along that way, I had thought a lot about what I really enjoyed during my undergraduate degree with this professor and how we explored different questions. And what I really enjoyed was kind of that process of discovery, being able to pursue a topic I was particularly passionate about and being encouraged to see where it goes and without necessarily being told how to do it or, you know, this is what you have to do. I was allowed to really explore and see what worked and what didn't. And that was something even in industry that I didn't get because you have to meet certain project deadlines, you have to publish products in order to the company to make money. And in the academic environment, though, the real drive is discovery and innovation. And I really got to have fun with that. I also had thought a lot about my experiences at an undergraduate where I volunteered a lot, where I taught to high schoolers students, high school students, and Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts at U of M Dearborn, for they were on their surface to teach computer science topics, but to the university they were recruitment efforts, of course, but at these events, I really enjoyed getting to help people understand a topic that I was passionate about. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:08:59]: And so right after I entered this program, I started to teach right away because I was already familiar with U of M Dearborn's classes. They had a lot of trust in how successful I had been at my undergraduate level and really handed off my first lab that I had to teach. And pretty much from that moment, I was hooked because I found not only did I enjoy the research aspect, but I really enjoyed getting to teach. And I almost felt that that was more rewarding in the end. And so with this professor that I had, he really encouraged me to keep at discovering and practicing my teaching abilities as well. So I taught pretty much every semester that I had since I entered the PhD program. So almost for five years straight, I Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:38]: taught every semester Every grad student goes through a point in time where they say to themselves, am I good enough? Is this what I should be doing? And there's that feeling of imposter syndrome, feeling of inequity, feeling of as I said, I'm not good enough for this or I shouldn't be here, or should I be here. Did that ever happen to you? And I'm guessing it did at med school, but talk to me about that and how imposter syndrome or self doubt kind of reared its head for you as you were going through it and how did you handle it. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:10:08]: So for kind of those experiences, it was, I think most recently, and this one's probably a little bit easier to talk about, which is going to be my first paper in trying to transition from a PhD student to a PhD candidate with that qualification exam. In that case, I had really struggled to get my first paper published. My co advisor was really adamant that the work was sound and I didn't really believe him, mainly because every time we submitted to one of the top A level conferences, we would get negative feedback and they wouldn't believe that we had discovered this transfer learning between these two software engineering processes. And we had the data and I kept churning through it in my head. I kept rewriting the papers again and again for another conference and another conference and eventually we did get it published. But along that way I really questioned if this was for me, if I was doing things right or if I belonged here because I couldn't get acceptance at the professional level through that acceptance of your first conference paper. And it really hurt each time I get those really stinging rejections. And I suppose it really just took falling back on, is this what I wanted to do? And checking with the people that I trusted, my two advisors, particularly the one that I had at the undergraduate level, and talking with them and making sure that was I doing the right thing? Am I on a wrong base? Am I getting good results even if they're not being accepted? And along the way you really do doubt yourself. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:11:31]: And I think you need to find moments where things are, are good enough for you, where success in your own definitions rather than finding that exterior validation. And for me that really came from the classroom where even though at the research area or publication rate I wasn't getting that instant gratification, that instant success, but in the classroom I was so I was getting really great teaching evaluations, I was still getting positive feedback from students, seeing them succeed in the classroom and wanting to take other classes with me. And that really helped drive me to keep going ahead. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:04]: That goes back to that whole conversation of resiliency and having to push through and being able to know that you may get pushed down, that you got to get yourself back up and be able to kind of dust yourself off and keep moving forward. And every person, as you're going through graduate school, you have to wear a lot of hats. You got to balance things and you have to. Many graduate students are having to balance things like not only school, but work, family, personal responsibilities. While going through graduate school. How did you balance all of the hats that you had to wear as you were going through that process? Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:12:37]: I guess there's one answer which is I still haven't figured it out. Even as a professor, there's so many hats that we wear all the time. But I would say that I was very honored and grateful for the opportunity U of M. Dearborn saw in me. And they gave me a scholarship so I didn't actually have to to work. I had given up my role in industry to go full time on my PhD and I had that graduate student instructor role at 50%. So as long as I taught two courses a semester, they funded my education, which was really great. I know that not everyone can benefit from that and it is a tremendous honor. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:13:10]: So that relieved a lot of pressure. So I was really left with sort of a couple hats there. I had to contribute with research and I had to contribute with teaching, and I had to contribute to still performing some service, which was recruitment efforts, small talks with other grad students in the lab, mentorship, things like that. And balancing those three things was extremely difficult. As a student, you want to, of course, spend all of your time writing the best research that you can, and your advisors are constantly pushing you to complete the work, to get it out and published. And in the meantime, you have 30 to 60 students constantly asking for your attention as yourself still a student. And that required learning new ways to deal with time management, becoming really comfortable with things don't have to be perfect, they have to be good enough. Which means that you want to deliver a high quality piece of work, but at the same time, if you spend too much of your effort refining it again and again and again until you think it's, it's 100% perfect, which nothing ever will be, then you've really lost all of that extra time you could have been spending on one of your other jobs. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:14:15]: And so I found through a computer science topic in Agile Project management, learning a little bit about Kanban boards and how to break up everything that I have to do into smaller tasks, basically write down how much time I think they'll take, move them through. Let's say today I'm going to take this route, this task. I'm going to work on it until it's completed and then once that's done, I can shift to another task, task and so on. And that really helped organize how I went about working and dealing with some of those issues of perfection. I mean, I just had to decide, was this task completed well enough that I could put it in the completed category. And kind of other little time management tricks that you learn over the years, how to deal with email and things like that really, really help with that needing to wear multiple hats issue. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:57]: And as you were going through graduate school, you talked about the fact that you had a lot of support as you were going through there. And you do develop relationships with faculties and other, with faculty and students. And I guess as you were going through that, were there any other campus resources or student organizations that helped to support your success? Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:15:17]: When I was an undergraduate at U of M, Dearborn, acm, the association for Computing Machinery, had a student chapter. And through there I made a lot of friends and connections and we worked together on quite a few projects. I mean, the friends that I met, we also took classes together. And so we would work on term projects well together and push forward there. But at the graduate level, I hate to say it, but in a lot of ways, there wasn't time for, for extracurriculars or student organizations. I was so overwhelmed with needing to do the teaching and the research that I wasn't able to participate as much as I wanted to in other campus activities. So I would say that I really fell back mostly upon my own lab group and the postdocs that were in the lab, learning from them, learning from the other undergraduate students, or learning from the other graduate students in that lab group, being able to bounce ideas off them, have them bounce ideas off me, which would of course make me think about new avenues, really helped. And so I really. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:16:12]: Learning the other people in your lab group, learning other students who are working on similar things to you can really be beneficial. And not only improving your own work, but then also being able to find those resources to help you find that resiliency as well. So if you see other people struggling with the same issues that you are struggling with publications or struggling in a class or struggling with a certain concept and you struggle with it together, you suddenly feel that, yeah, this is normal, you belong. It's just normal to have to fight Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:43]: through this and I guess as you think about not only your own graduate school experiences, but also your experience as a faculty member. Now, what are some tips that you might offer others that are considering graduate education, whether it's in computer science, physical therapy, business, whatever it might be, that would help them find success sooner? Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:17:01]: I would say make sure you're taking advantage of office hours and talking with your professor. Getting to know them is really critical for a great graduate education because once you've made connection, it's really easy to propose different research avenues or to be able to pursue different advanced topics through elective courses. I would say that a lot of things were what professors are looking for in terms of students are those that are curious, those that want to explore topics beyond the classroom. So going above and beyond, I think one of the best ways that you can do that is by taking a project in the class and not just meeting the requirements, but exceeding them. A couple of the students that I've worked with, with, I did never ask them to do some of the features that they added into some of these programs, but on their own initiative because they were curious and they wanted to do more and they wanted to show off. They went and learned a lot more than they had to outside of the classroom and ended up delivering just phenomenal work. So much so that I reached out and asked them if they were interested in doing research projects. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:00]: Well, Jeff, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today and for talking to us about the ins and outs and ups and downs and kind of turns along the way that you went through to be able to get to where you are today. And I just want to say thank you and I wish you all the best. Dr. Jeff Yackley [00:18:16]: You're very welcome. And thank you again for having me. It was an honor to be able to talk with you for a little bit. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:20]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit UMFlint.Edu/GraduatePrograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
From Engineering to Physical Therapy: Max's Journey
For many students, the decision to pursue graduate school is not a straight path. It is a journey filled with uncertainty, exploration, self-discovery, and growth. In this episode of the podcast, listeners meet Maxwell Camara, whose story perfectly captures what it means to embrace the process of finding your purpose. Max's journey did not begin in physical therapy. In fact, he originally started in engineering before eventually transitioning into kinesiology and discovering a passion for helping others heal through movement and rehabilitation. One of the strongest themes throughout this conversation is that it is okay not to have everything figured out right away. Max openly shares that even after applying to physical therapy school, he still was not completely certain it was the right fit. It was not until he became immersed in clinical experiences and hands-on patient care that he truly found confidence in his path. Another key theme in the episode is the power of experiential learning. Max discusses how opportunities like the HEART Clinic at the University of Michigan-Flint helped shape his professional identity. Through direct patient interaction, leadership experiences, mentoring younger students, and even participating in research projects involving wearable technology, he was able to connect classroom knowledge to real-world impact. His experiences demonstrate that graduate school is about far more than lectures and exams—it is about applying what you learn to make a difference in people's lives. The conversation also dives deeply into balance and resilience. Max speaks honestly about the challenges of transitioning from undergraduate coursework to the demands of doctoral-level education. He explains how treating graduate school like a full-time job, developing consistent routines, prioritizing exercise, and building a strong support system helped him maintain both academic success and personal well-being. His reflections on imposter syndrome are especially relatable, reminding listeners that self-doubt is common, but growth often happens when you push beyond your comfort zone. For anyone considering graduate school, this episode offers practical advice and encouragement. Max emphasizes the importance of getting involved early, talking to professionals in the field, exploring hands-on opportunities, and truly understanding the profession before committing to a graduate program. Whether you are considering physical therapy, another healthcare field, or graduate education in general, this episode is packed with authentic insights that will help you think more intentionally about your future. Max's story is a reminder that success is not always about having all the answers from the beginning—it is about being willing to learn, adapt, and keep moving forward. TRANSCRIPT 1 00:00:03.310 --> 00:00:18.379 Christopher Lewis: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love being able to have an opportunity to talk with you every week. 2 00:00:18.520 --> 00:00:23.449 Christopher Lewis: on this journey that you're on. And I call it a journey because it truly is a journey. 3 00:00:23.750 --> 00:00:30.120 Christopher Lewis: Whether you're at the very beginning, just starting to think about, is grad school right for me? Or maybe you've… 4 00:00:30.560 --> 00:00:37.740 Christopher Lewis: decided, yep, I'm applying, or maybe you did apply, it got accepted, maybe you're in graduate school. No matter where you are. 5 00:00:37.940 --> 00:00:40.050 Christopher Lewis: You are truly on a journey. 6 00:00:40.450 --> 00:00:47.830 Christopher Lewis: And as you're going through this journey, there are things that you can do to be able to find success in that journey that you're on. 7 00:00:47.980 --> 00:01:02.529 Christopher Lewis: And that's why this podcast exists. Every week, I love being able to have this conversation with you, to walk with you, to provide you with some tips and tricks and things that you can put into that toolbox that you bring with you everywhere. 8 00:01:03.210 --> 00:01:07.099 Christopher Lewis: That's why every week I also love being able to introduce you to new people. 9 00:01:07.380 --> 00:01:20.450 Christopher Lewis: New people with different experiences that have all gone through what you're going through, and can provide you with some perspective, some things for you to think about, and maybe some things to implement for yourself. 10 00:01:21.410 --> 00:01:23.589 Christopher Lewis: Today we've got another great guest. 11 00:01:24.170 --> 00:01:26.190 Christopher Lewis: Today, we've got another great guest. 12 00:01:26.780 --> 00:01:29.190 Christopher Lewis: Is it Max or Maxwell? Which would… what do you go by? 13 00:01:29.360 --> 00:01:30.359 Maxwell Camara: Max is good. 14 00:01:32.650 --> 00:01:36.910 Christopher Lewis: Today, we've got another great guest. Max Kamara is with us today. 15 00:01:37.130 --> 00:01:39.230 Christopher Lewis: Max is a… 16 00:01:40.210 --> 00:01:58.709 Christopher Lewis: Max is just finishing up his second year in the physical therapy program at the University of Michigan, Flint, working into his third year, gonna be finishing off this year. I'm really excited to be able to talk with him about the journey that he's been on, and to share that with you. Max, thanks so much for being here today. 17 00:01:59.100 --> 00:02:00.220 Maxwell Camara: Thank you for having me. 18 00:02:01.670 --> 00:02:13.849 Christopher Lewis: So, Max, one of the things that I love doing as we start these conversations is really turning the clock back in time. And I know you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, and at some point in that journey. 19 00:02:13.850 --> 00:02:23.960 Christopher Lewis: you made the decision. You made the decision that you wanted to go further, you wanted to continue your education, and you wanted to become a physical therapist. Bring it back to that point, and what was going through your head? 20 00:02:24.330 --> 00:02:25.300 Maxwell Camara: Sure. 21 00:02:25.730 --> 00:02:36.020 Maxwell Camara: So actually, before I was a student at U of M Ann Arbor, I was a student at the University of Colorado my freshman year, and I studied engineering. 22 00:02:36.160 --> 00:02:40.730 Maxwell Camara: So, physical therapy was definitely not on the radar for quite some time. 23 00:02:41.080 --> 00:02:59.470 Maxwell Camara: So I think for me deciding to go to physical therapy school, a graduate school, it really was more of a slow burn, more of a process, and that really started once I was in Ann Arbor. So, once COVID had happened in 2020, I moved back to Michigan, so I went back to Michigan. 24 00:02:59.660 --> 00:03:10.739 Maxwell Camara: to finish out my school, I went into kinesiology knowing that I really enjoyed exercise, I had some good mentors, that taught me about the great things the body can do on its own to heal. 25 00:03:11.210 --> 00:03:18.059 Maxwell Camara: So… Physical therapy was one of those options, so I ended up joining the pre-PT club. 26 00:03:18.690 --> 00:03:31.689 Maxwell Camara: I was in that for a year, and then I became the service member, so I talked with a lot of the employers around the area, a lot of PTs, in Michigan, and then I eventually became the president of that club. 27 00:03:32.130 --> 00:03:33.909 Maxwell Camara: Interestingly, I would say. 28 00:03:34.190 --> 00:03:43.090 Maxwell Camara: even at that point, I was still pretty unsure if physical therapy was something I wanted to do, especially after finding more and more about it, so… 29 00:03:43.420 --> 00:03:52.019 Maxwell Camara: I think as we go through the conversation, maybe we can talk more about, you know, who should choose graduate school, maybe PT school specifically. 30 00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:58.700 Maxwell Camara: But I ended up choosing it because I really love the exercise component, I wanted more out of, 31 00:03:58.860 --> 00:04:08.760 Maxwell Camara: my knowledge base, rather than just being, you know, a personal trainer or an exercise physiologist, I really saw value in helping people heal from these really 32 00:04:08.880 --> 00:04:12.189 Maxwell Camara: Bad, severe conditions, 33 00:04:12.510 --> 00:04:18.640 Maxwell Camara: And then I end up applying, and here we are today, almost done graduating in a couple months here, so… 34 00:04:21.720 --> 00:04:26.800 Christopher Lewis: Did I… did I mess up? Are you already in your third year? Didn't I said you were finishing your second? 35 00:04:27.590 --> 00:04:29.150 Maxwell Camara: I am in my third year, yes. 36 00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:30.570 Maxwell Camara: Okay. 37 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:38.719 Christopher Lewis: So, I'm gonna… I'm gonna have to go back and post, and I'll fix that. So, let me just… I'm gonna say something right now that I'm going to then… 38 00:04:39.350 --> 00:04:40.779 Christopher Lewis: put back. So… 39 00:04:42.210 --> 00:04:55.559 Christopher Lewis: Max is in his third year of physical therapy school at the University of Michigan, Flint, almost there, almost at the end, and gonna be graduating before we know it, and I'm really excited to be able to have him here, and to have him share his journey with you. 40 00:04:58.050 --> 00:05:08.420 Christopher Lewis: So, Max, one of the things you just said was that you didn't know. You didn't know whether or not physical therapy was really the right place for you. You started in engineering, very different path. 41 00:05:09.000 --> 00:05:14.890 Christopher Lewis: Very different types of courses that you have to take, different way of thinking in that regard as well. 42 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:19.889 Christopher Lewis: So talk to me about… journey for yourself. And… 43 00:05:20.330 --> 00:05:26.009 Christopher Lewis: You mentioned the fact that you really liked some of the sports aspect and the healing aspects. 44 00:05:26.190 --> 00:05:30.530 Christopher Lewis: But what was the tipping point for you, where you said to yourself, Yep. 45 00:05:30.660 --> 00:05:33.950 Christopher Lewis: I'm going to grad school, I'm doing physical therapy, versus… 46 00:05:34.300 --> 00:05:38.199 Christopher Lewis: I'm gonna finish at the Bachelor's, and I'm gonna go and do something else. 47 00:05:40.320 --> 00:05:45.749 Maxwell Camara: I think the tipping point… I decided that if I was gonna do it. 48 00:05:45.850 --> 00:05:47.390 Maxwell Camara: I was gonna do it now. 49 00:05:47.840 --> 00:05:56.610 Maxwell Camara: And I still, at that point, wasn't sure if it was the right decision. I wouldn't say I knew it was the right decision until probably about… 50 00:05:56.870 --> 00:06:08.189 Maxwell Camara: I would say, like, a year ago, so my second year of physical therapy school, once I had really started to get more involved in our pro bono clinic and finished my first clinical, was when I really knew 51 00:06:08.570 --> 00:06:09.460 Maxwell Camara: So… 52 00:06:09.940 --> 00:06:20.379 Maxwell Camara: that tipping point, I don't… I wouldn't say it was necessarily, you know, I knew in undergrad that I was gonna be a physical therapist. I knew that I was gonna give it a try and, you know. 53 00:06:21.130 --> 00:06:24.709 Maxwell Camara: I was gonna give it a try and be my best at it, no matter what I did. 54 00:06:25.290 --> 00:06:31.480 Maxwell Camara: But I knew I had this theoretical framework of what PT could, like, look like for me. 55 00:06:31.650 --> 00:06:43.250 Maxwell Camara: I had really dove into what PT was through the club, talking to a bunch of different schools and therapists, so I had a pretty good idea of what PT could be. 56 00:06:43.360 --> 00:06:47.350 Maxwell Camara: But I still wouldn't say I was… I'm 100% sure. 57 00:06:47.600 --> 00:06:53.790 Maxwell Camara: that PT was the right direction until I was actually in PT school, like, a couple years later. 58 00:06:55.480 --> 00:07:01.049 Christopher Lewis: Now, I know that as you did decide to apply to graduate school. 59 00:07:01.260 --> 00:07:04.930 Christopher Lewis: I'm sure that you went through your own process of trying to figure out 60 00:07:05.210 --> 00:07:19.070 Christopher Lewis: what's the right program, what's the right fit, and where do I want to be? And with physical therapy being as competitive as it is, I'm sure you applied to numerous schools to be able to cover your bases and try to determine 61 00:07:19.520 --> 00:07:21.479 Christopher Lewis: Ultimately, where you would end up. 62 00:07:22.030 --> 00:07:25.240 Christopher Lewis: Now, you ended up coming to the University of Michigan, Flint. 63 00:07:25.480 --> 00:07:36.910 Christopher Lewis: And I guess I want to go back to that point. Talk to me about that final decision process for yourself, and how did you decide that the University of Michigan Flint was the right program for you? 64 00:07:38.020 --> 00:07:44.460 Maxwell Camara: Yeah, so when I was applying, I applied to, I think, 6 schools, U of M Flint being one of them. 65 00:07:44.580 --> 00:07:55.709 Maxwell Camara: Obviously I was biased towards U of M Flint, because it had the U of M name. But I also applied to, I believe, 3 or 4 other schools in Michigan, and then 2 out of state. 66 00:07:56.140 --> 00:07:59.359 Maxwell Camara: So… I think that gave me more… 67 00:07:59.640 --> 00:08:12.479 Maxwell Camara: options to consider, as I was applying and just receiving, decisions through, I think it was December, so you apply around July, August, then you usually know where you're going by December. 68 00:08:12.860 --> 00:08:17.400 Maxwell Camara: So… What I was really looking for was a place where I… 69 00:08:17.500 --> 00:08:20.049 Maxwell Camara: I enjoyed the people that were there. 70 00:08:20.210 --> 00:08:22.629 Maxwell Camara: And then I thought I could… 71 00:08:22.810 --> 00:08:27.060 Maxwell Camara: Really thrive in terms of… there were a lot of hands-on opportunities. 72 00:08:27.480 --> 00:08:44.759 Maxwell Camara: So U of M Flint checked off both those boxes, and when I received the decision, they gave me a call. It was actually one of my mentors, that I ended up working with through my second and third year, and she… she kind of sealed the deal. I didn't receive any sort of call or, like, any sort of… 73 00:08:44.860 --> 00:08:50.310 Maxwell Camara: I would say personalized message from any other school. So that kind of really is what sold me. 74 00:08:50.500 --> 00:08:53.440 Maxwell Camara: And then I also was able to visit, 75 00:08:53.630 --> 00:09:05.429 Maxwell Camara: with one of the students that was there at the time, and she kind of took me through the school, introduced me to everybody, I got to meet a lot of the students and actually talk to them. So I think that's what really… 76 00:09:05.550 --> 00:09:07.350 Maxwell Camara: Made the decision easier. 77 00:09:07.800 --> 00:09:13.489 Maxwell Camara: And then I also considered other things, like the location, so I could live at home and save money. 78 00:09:13.780 --> 00:09:18.170 Maxwell Camara: I considered things like the cost. It was one of the cheapest in the state. 79 00:09:18.400 --> 00:09:22.839 Maxwell Camara: And then I could also be more hands-on, so they had a really robust 80 00:09:23.100 --> 00:09:34.250 Maxwell Camara: clinical experience within the school that you could work at every Friday, which is something that I end up really taking advantage of, and I think has helped me be very successful in PT school. 81 00:09:35.440 --> 00:09:48.289 Christopher Lewis: Now, you just talked about the hands-on experience, and you were talking about… we have a clinic called HEART, for those of you that don't know, and it is a pro bono clinic that is run by students, with faculty. 82 00:09:48.420 --> 00:10:00.110 Christopher Lewis: being there as well. Talk to me about that experience for yourself, and why was it so important for you to get involved with it, and why did you continue to stay involved with it throughout your experience at the University of Michigan-Flint? 83 00:10:00.770 --> 00:10:14.420 Maxwell Camara: Yeah, so I think a lot of students might take… take it for granted, that we have this clinic that has around 40 patients every week that we treat, and that's every week, so a lot of schools, I think, around half. 84 00:10:14.520 --> 00:10:21.510 Maxwell Camara: have some sort of clinic that they can work with, but it's not nearly as robust, it's not… it's not weekly, usually. 85 00:10:21.670 --> 00:10:37.939 Maxwell Camara: So we really have this cool opportunity to work with patients. And I really got involved, I think it was my first couple weeks, in something called Move More Walking. I just kind of went as that, you know, new student trying to figure out what was happening. A lot was happening, there's a lot of patients, there's paperwork, there's… 86 00:10:38.210 --> 00:10:49.109 Maxwell Camara: you know, you're working in groups with these patients with hard conditions to deal with, so most of them had strokes or traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord injuries, and you're trying to figure out what's happening, how can I even help? 87 00:10:49.580 --> 00:10:58.969 Maxwell Camara: So, eventually by… I believe it was my second or third semester, I talked to Dr. Amy York about potentially becoming a leader of that clinic. 88 00:10:59.440 --> 00:11:00.650 Maxwell Camara: So I went… 89 00:11:01.050 --> 00:11:07.519 Maxwell Camara: most of the weeks to… to that class to help these patients out. I really got close to a couple of them. 90 00:11:07.680 --> 00:11:11.540 Maxwell Camara: So I decided to take on more of that leadership position. 91 00:11:11.770 --> 00:11:20.599 Maxwell Camara: So I worked with two other guys in my class to help lead this part of the clinic, and we… we really got to dive deep into how the… 92 00:11:20.710 --> 00:11:34.590 Maxwell Camara: the treatment works, so how do we standardize the treatment for every patient with new students coming in? So whether it's first year or second years, how can we maximize both the student experience and the patient experience? So that was something we worked on. 93 00:11:35.100 --> 00:11:45.930 Maxwell Camara: We also worked on a documentation system that was really easy to use, but also it was helpful in determining what was good for the following week for all the new students. 94 00:11:46.030 --> 00:11:48.809 Maxwell Camara: And then we also worked on research projects, so… 95 00:11:49.070 --> 00:11:50.670 Maxwell Camara: one of the ones that I… 96 00:11:50.880 --> 00:12:09.740 Maxwell Camara: lead was called Active Hearts, so we gave all of our stroke patients active, wearable technology, so things like Fitbits or Apple Watches they could wear outside of the clinic. So we could really track and maximize our outcomes with our patients trying to get better. 97 00:12:10.040 --> 00:12:18.689 Maxwell Camara: So, a lot of research I was doing, something I never considered doing, something I probably would have said I didn't want to do at the beginning of PT school. 98 00:12:18.760 --> 00:12:36.400 Maxwell Camara: But it really opened a lot of doors in terms of meeting people, working on these really cool projects, traveling, presenting, working and mentoring the younger students. And I think that's what really has helped me grow into the PT that I'll become in, like, 14 weeks from now. 99 00:12:39.230 --> 00:12:58.650 Christopher Lewis: So, Max, I know that as you go into graduate school, whether it's physical therapy, business, whatever it might be, there's a transition that you make. There's a transition from undergrad and the way that you're taught in your undergraduate experience, and what you experience as a student in graduate school. And you've been able to find success in that journey. 100 00:12:58.940 --> 00:13:06.359 Christopher Lewis: Talk to me about… The things that you had to do as you were transitioning into graduate school. 101 00:13:07.200 --> 00:13:14.410 Christopher Lewis: That helped you find success. But also, what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout your entire graduate school journey? 102 00:13:15.660 --> 00:13:25.059 Maxwell Camara: I would say it's definitely a transition from undergrad to graduate school, especially as you're trying to get a doctoral degree. And in undergrad, I was able to… 103 00:13:25.250 --> 00:13:29.869 Maxwell Camara: Kind of passed by my classes studying, you know, in the last two weeks before an exam. 104 00:13:30.010 --> 00:13:31.960 Maxwell Camara: That does not work in PT school. 105 00:13:33.040 --> 00:13:41.090 Maxwell Camara: So I definitely had to transition into thinking more, you know, it's something you have to do weekly, almost every day, reviewing your stuff. 106 00:13:41.200 --> 00:13:43.450 Maxwell Camara: Trying to be ready for the next day. 107 00:13:43.660 --> 00:13:45.410 Maxwell Camara: So, in terms of… 108 00:13:46.010 --> 00:13:52.160 Maxwell Camara: either studying, or homework or projects, I said I would treat it more as a full-time job. 109 00:13:52.350 --> 00:14:00.510 Maxwell Camara: So 40 hours a week, so around half that would be classes, and then the other half would be preparing for the next day, preparing for the week. 110 00:14:00.920 --> 00:14:10.680 Maxwell Camara: doing homework, working on projects, and then once I was at that, you know, 40-ish hours a week, I would… I gave myself other time to do other things, so… 111 00:14:10.860 --> 00:14:16.320 Maxwell Camara: Exercising, getting outside, just doing anything else that I enjoyed. 112 00:14:16.640 --> 00:14:23.300 Maxwell Camara: So, still finding that balance, but really making sure I put in the specific time to review stuff. 113 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:34.650 Maxwell Camara: In different ways, too, so I would do a lot of whiteboarding in grad school, something I never did in undergrad. So things like drawing out the big ideas, so what's your diagnosis? What sort of… 114 00:14:34.740 --> 00:14:48.320 Maxwell Camara: Signs and symptoms are you going to see? What sort of tests are you using? What's the intervention look like? What does the actual person look like? Rather than just memorizing certain facts like you might do in a lot of your classes in undergrad. 115 00:14:52.680 --> 00:14:54.759 Christopher Lewis: Now, you just talked about the fact that 116 00:14:55.130 --> 00:14:59.050 Christopher Lewis: There's a lot of hats that you wear when you're in graduate school. 117 00:14:59.420 --> 00:15:16.610 Christopher Lewis: Not only are you a student, you're a friend, you're a family member, you are… as I said, you're wearing lots of hats. And as you said earlier, one of the things that you thought of when you thought of looking… working… or when you thought of going to the University of Michigan-Flint was that you could live at home. 118 00:15:16.940 --> 00:15:21.020 Christopher Lewis: And then there's that draw from your family of, hey, come on back. 119 00:15:21.860 --> 00:15:37.639 Christopher Lewis: So talk to me about balance, and how did you find that balance for yourself? What did you have to do to find that balance for yourself, where you were balancing school, work, family, or other personal responsibilities while you were going through this graduate school experience? 120 00:15:39.840 --> 00:15:56.290 Maxwell Camara: Balance is hard. It took me a while to figure it out. I would say maybe even two to three semesters in wasn't until I really figured out how to have that balance. So I think it's okay to not really understand, you know, where… how to do it, how to balance jobs and family and school. 121 00:15:56.390 --> 00:16:01.129 Maxwell Camara: But the way I found it was really framing it as that 40-hour work week. 122 00:16:01.310 --> 00:16:10.009 Maxwell Camara: And then making sure I had the routine in place. So something I knew I wanted to always have through PT school was a consistent exercise schedule. 123 00:16:10.350 --> 00:16:11.810 Maxwell Camara: So, going to the gym. 124 00:16:12.220 --> 00:16:20.950 Maxwell Camara: two to four times a week, and not making any excuses not to go. So that really helps to, you know, reset my mind, and be ready for… 125 00:16:21.060 --> 00:16:23.360 Maxwell Camara: The other hours that I had to put in that day. 126 00:16:23.860 --> 00:16:31.409 Maxwell Camara: So just having that routine helped shape that balance. Also having a good support system, so I was able to find some great 127 00:16:31.610 --> 00:16:39.740 Maxwell Camara: friends, and I have good family that were able to support me in terms of, you know, if I'm struggling, I can ask them questions. If they're struggling, I can help them. 128 00:16:39.900 --> 00:16:41.169 Maxwell Camara: I also… 129 00:16:41.540 --> 00:16:49.479 Maxwell Camara: you know, can talk to people about other things going on. So just making sure I had that community in place, and then still having… 130 00:16:49.650 --> 00:16:56.190 Maxwell Camara: my routine, and then once I had that set, I could build on top of that as I went through school, is what really… 131 00:16:56.460 --> 00:16:58.430 Maxwell Camara: Made it a little bit easier. 132 00:17:00.410 --> 00:17:08.460 Christopher Lewis: Now, I talk to graduate students all the time, and as they typically go into graduate school, they're… 133 00:17:08.800 --> 00:17:17.739 Christopher Lewis: Many times is that feeling of imposter syndrome that creeps in, that self-doubt that rears its head. 134 00:17:18.040 --> 00:17:23.389 Christopher Lewis: Talk to me about how that impacted you in graduate school, and how did you handle it? 135 00:17:25.520 --> 00:17:35.980 Maxwell Camara: Yeah, I think it's one of those tough subjects where we work really hard to be, you know, the best we can at this job, but there's still that doubt of if we're actually helping anybody. 136 00:17:36.580 --> 00:17:41.729 Maxwell Camara: So, I think… I'm lucky, I really love what I do. 137 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:47.159 Maxwell Camara: Because I've been able to see the change that it makes for people, just as a student. 138 00:17:47.330 --> 00:17:48.320 Maxwell Camara: So… 139 00:17:48.800 --> 00:17:58.239 Maxwell Camara: I'd really encourage anybody going into grad school or PT school to take advantage of these real opportunities in their field. So, for me, it was more… 140 00:17:58.360 --> 00:18:03.010 Maxwell Camara: Of those heart opportunities, so doing the research, being in the clinic, 141 00:18:03.180 --> 00:18:07.600 Maxwell Camara: That's what really helped me see the big changes for people. 142 00:18:07.990 --> 00:18:13.300 Maxwell Camara: So, being able to see the change, plus really putting in the hard work, and really… 143 00:18:13.770 --> 00:18:17.150 Maxwell Camara: Going beyond what was expected of me was… 144 00:18:17.340 --> 00:18:21.390 Maxwell Camara: Kind of helped me get past that idea of imposter syndrome. 145 00:18:21.790 --> 00:18:26.360 Maxwell Camara: You know what, even in the clinic today, as I'm still… 146 00:18:26.550 --> 00:18:33.169 Maxwell Camara: trying to graduate, I still have some of those days where it's, you know, starts to creep in and I feel like I'm not really helping them. 147 00:18:33.580 --> 00:18:35.220 Maxwell Camara: And I think the best way that… 148 00:18:35.370 --> 00:18:38.920 Maxwell Camara: I've been able to get over that, is that things just take time. 149 00:18:39.550 --> 00:18:46.060 Maxwell Camara: We're only seeing these patients for a really small percentage of their entire week, so there's other things happening. 150 00:18:46.340 --> 00:18:50.930 Maxwell Camara: But if you give it patience and time, and you put in the, you know, your best effort. 151 00:18:51.210 --> 00:18:56.920 Maxwell Camara: A lot of the time, you're gonna see these really cool changes, and they're gonna come at the least expected time. 152 00:18:57.360 --> 00:18:59.950 Maxwell Camara: So I think that's what has really helped me with 153 00:19:00.350 --> 00:19:04.239 Maxwell Camara: imposter syndrome and feel like I just can't, or I wouldn't be able to do it. 154 00:19:07.550 --> 00:19:13.149 Christopher Lewis: And one of the things that I know when you go through a program like physical therapy is one of the 155 00:19:13.600 --> 00:19:21.059 Christopher Lewis: One of the things that really allows for you to be able to take everything that you're learning and putting it into 156 00:19:21.210 --> 00:19:24.250 Christopher Lewis: Reality is going out on those clinicals. 157 00:19:24.880 --> 00:19:29.190 Christopher Lewis: And I know you're currently in clinicals right now, in your third year. 158 00:19:29.950 --> 00:19:32.600 Christopher Lewis: Talk to me about… the… 159 00:19:33.070 --> 00:19:40.479 Christopher Lewis: What those clinicals have done for you to be able to help you to see the future that you see for yourself in this profession? 160 00:19:41.900 --> 00:19:50.430 Maxwell Camara: Yeah, so I was pretty intentional with the choices I made for my clinicals. The first one I did was in the hospital. 161 00:19:50.760 --> 00:19:53.949 Maxwell Camara: And I'll admit, it wasn't something I was super interested in. 162 00:19:54.140 --> 00:19:59.050 Maxwell Camara: Because I know it's a little bit more of a challenger, or a challenging setting. 163 00:19:59.260 --> 00:20:09.950 Maxwell Camara: But I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would. So just being able to see PT work in all these different settings and different populations is very… it's very cool to see. 164 00:20:10.310 --> 00:20:14.430 Maxwell Camara: So I encourage any graduate student to really 165 00:20:14.640 --> 00:20:22.510 Maxwell Camara: you know, branch out. So I enjoy orthopedic settings, but I also wanted to see every other setting while I was a student. 166 00:20:22.620 --> 00:20:27.880 Maxwell Camara: to get the best mentoring I could, in this short 9-month period. 167 00:20:28.100 --> 00:20:36.070 Maxwell Camara: So I had the hospital setting, I'm at one now that's more of an outpatient neuro setting, then I have one that's a sports setting. 168 00:20:36.300 --> 00:20:38.930 Maxwell Camara: And that was set up so that I could keep building. 169 00:20:39.140 --> 00:20:41.820 Maxwell Camara: Off of what… off of the last one. 170 00:20:42.340 --> 00:20:50.710 Maxwell Camara: And really challenged myself with different populations and things that I saw, even if it wasn't something I was necessarily super interested in. 171 00:20:51.150 --> 00:20:55.910 Maxwell Camara: So, setting yourself up for success. So, I did an interview for my last one. 172 00:20:56.200 --> 00:20:59.689 Maxwell Camara: I was able to talk to faculty, And figure out which… 173 00:20:59.900 --> 00:21:14.079 Maxwell Camara: clinicals they thought were… might be better than others, maybe if they had known some of the clinical instructors. So just getting an idea of what would… might work for me before I actually selected these clinicals was very helpful. 174 00:21:14.540 --> 00:21:16.390 Maxwell Camara: And then in terms of after. 175 00:21:16.500 --> 00:21:18.580 Maxwell Camara: It just gives you a really big… 176 00:21:19.490 --> 00:21:26.879 Maxwell Camara: You know, more experience to draw from as you're either getting a job, looking for jobs, or maybe, you know, starting something on your own. 177 00:21:27.030 --> 00:21:33.230 Maxwell Camara: So, trying the thing, and if you don't like it, move on, but maybe you do like it, and it's just another option for you. 178 00:21:36.370 --> 00:21:45.209 Christopher Lewis: Now, as you think about other individuals that are thinking about graduate school, whether it's physical therapy, or business, or something completely different. 179 00:21:45.930 --> 00:21:48.539 Christopher Lewis: And you think back to the experience that you've had. 180 00:21:49.070 --> 00:21:54.890 Christopher Lewis: What are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? 181 00:21:58.060 --> 00:22:02.879 Maxwell Camara: That's a tough one, because graduate school's becoming more expensive. 182 00:22:03.120 --> 00:22:07.539 Maxwell Camara: And a lot of the jobs maybe aren't necessarily matching that with salary. 183 00:22:07.970 --> 00:22:15.380 Maxwell Camara: So I would say really get involved in undergrad with… if you're thinking about grad school in that, you know, specific field. 184 00:22:15.540 --> 00:22:21.519 Maxwell Camara: So for me, PT, I would join the pre-PT club and learn as much as you can through that club. 185 00:22:21.880 --> 00:22:29.809 Maxwell Camara: Maybe if you're thinking of other professions, join the PA club, join the, you know, any sort of medical club, so if you're thinking about med school. 186 00:22:29.920 --> 00:22:33.359 Maxwell Camara: So just learn about as many things as you can while you're an undergrad. 187 00:22:33.490 --> 00:22:41.790 Maxwell Camara: shadow all these different settings before you go into PT school, make sure it's something that you think you'd really thrive in before you sign up for it. 188 00:22:42.060 --> 00:22:56.379 Maxwell Camara: And talk to the people that are actually doing it. So, maybe that's a student, maybe that's the faculty, and just see, is this, you know, something I would enjoy? Are the students enjoying what they're doing? Is it, you know, could I see myself here in 2 years? 189 00:22:59.450 --> 00:23:14.989 Christopher Lewis: Well, Max, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your story today, and I'm really looking forward to seeing you as you get ready to finish up here, and the future that it holds for you as well, and I truly wish you all the best. 190 00:23:15.240 --> 00:23:16.509 Maxwell Camara: Great, thanks for having me.
From Research to Reality: Finding Success in Graduate School
*]:pointer-events-auto R6Vx5W_threadScrollVars scroll-mb-[calc(var(--scroll-root-safe-area-inset-bottom,0px)+var(--thread-response-height))] scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]" dir="auto" data-turn-id= "request-WEB:b97d1e6a-7417-433c-8520-25a826ef893b-0" data-turn-id-container= "request-WEB:b97d1e6a-7417-433c-8520-25a826ef893b-0" data-testid= "conversation-turn-2" data-scroll-anchor="false" data-turn= "assistant"> In this episode of the Victors in Grad School podcast, listeners are taken on an honest and insightful journey through the graduate school experience with Steve Wilson. From the very beginning of the conversation, one theme stands out clearly: graduate school is not simply about earning another degree—it is about growth, discovery, and learning how to navigate uncertainty. Steve shares how a summer undergraduate research opportunity completely changed the direction of his life. What began as a simple invitation from a professor turned into a passion for research and ultimately led him toward a PhD. His story highlights something many students may not realize: graduate education can open doors that once felt impossible, especially when students learn about opportunities like fully funded doctoral programs. Steve encourages students to think deeply about why they want to pursue graduate school and what they hope to gain from the experience. Rather than simply "checking the box" for another credential, he emphasizes taking ownership of the journey—seeking out projects, building relationships, exploring research opportunities, and connecting classroom learning to long-term career goals. Steve openly reflects on the challenges of adapting from undergraduate coursework to the expectations of doctoral-level research. He speaks honestly about moments of uncertainty, the value of mentorship, and how important it was to build friendships and maintain personal connections outside of academia. His reflections remind listeners that success in graduate school is not just about intelligence or hard work; it is also about community, self-awareness, and resilience. One especially powerful takeaway from the episode is the reminder that preparation matters. Steve discusses how reading research papers, learning trends within a field, and connecting with others already in graduate programs can help students feel more confident before they even step into their first class. Whether you are just beginning to think about graduate school, currently applying, or already deep into your academic journey, this episode offers practical advice and encouragement that can help you move forward with confidence. Steve's story is relatable, thoughtful, and filled with wisdom for anyone considering what comes next in their educational and professional path. If you are looking for inspiration, real-world advice, and an honest look at graduate education, this is an episode you will not want to miss. TRANSCRIPT WEBVTT 1 00:00:03.260 --> 00:00:19.929 Christopher Lewis: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love being able to be on this journey with you, and I call it a journey because it truly is a journey. 2 00:00:20.140 --> 00:00:33.039 Christopher Lewis: Whether you are at the very beginning, and you're starting to think about, well, maybe I want to do this grad school thing, or maybe you've applied, and you're waiting for that answer, or you've already gotten your answer, and you're accepted, and you're going to be starting classes soon. 3 00:00:33.120 --> 00:00:43.290 Christopher Lewis: Or, maybe you're in a graduate program, and you see that light at the end of the tunnel. No matter where you are, you're on a journey. There are things that you can do today, right now. 4 00:00:43.430 --> 00:00:50.749 Christopher Lewis: That you can work on to help you to be able to find success in this graduate school journey. 5 00:00:50.830 --> 00:01:05.529 Christopher Lewis: And that's why this podcast exists. Every week, I love being able to have the opportunity to be able to work with you, to introduce you to people that have gone before you, gone to graduate school, found success in their own ways. 6 00:01:05.760 --> 00:01:10.280 Christopher Lewis: And then you can learn from what they learned along the way as well. 7 00:01:10.360 --> 00:01:31.270 Christopher Lewis: Today, we've got another great guest. Dr. Steve Wilson is with us today, and Dr. Wilson is a faculty member at the University of Michigan, Flint in our College of Innovation and Technology, and I'm really excited to be able to have him here, and for him to talk a little bit more about his own experience, and to introduce him to you. 8 00:01:31.650 --> 00:01:33.569 Christopher Lewis: Steve, thanks so much for being here today. 9 00:01:34.080 --> 00:01:35.429 Steve Wilson: Yeah, thanks for having me. 10 00:01:36.250 --> 00:01:52.029 Christopher Lewis: You know, I'm really excited to be able to have you here, and I always love to start these conversations really turning the clock back in time, because I know that you did your undergraduate work at Taylor, at Taylor University, and when you were there. 11 00:01:52.030 --> 00:01:57.120 Christopher Lewis: there was a point. There was a point in time where you said to yourself, I'm not done. 12 00:01:57.270 --> 00:01:58.669 Christopher Lewis: I want to continue. 13 00:01:59.050 --> 00:02:04.869 Christopher Lewis: Bring me back to that point, and what was going through your head as you made that decision for yourself? 14 00:02:06.410 --> 00:02:14.000 Steve Wilson: Yeah, great question. So I think it was a series of events that led me there. 15 00:02:14.840 --> 00:02:19.329 Steve Wilson: which started with research. I mean, that's, I think, what led me to this whole thing. 16 00:02:19.570 --> 00:02:23.810 Steve Wilson: I had a great opportunity to be involved in a summer research project. 17 00:02:23.930 --> 00:02:25.669 Steve Wilson: while I was working at Taylor. 18 00:02:26.020 --> 00:02:33.089 Steve Wilson: We were kind of working with a company there on some things, and, you know, it was just, one of my professors. 19 00:02:33.730 --> 00:02:40.900 Steve Wilson: at some point in the semester, said, hey, Steve, are you working on anything this summer? We've got this interesting research project, you might be a good fit. 20 00:02:41.280 --> 00:02:49.669 Steve Wilson: And I thought it sounded like something fun to try, so I did that, and throughout that summer, I kind of 21 00:02:49.900 --> 00:02:52.199 Steve Wilson: Fell in love with research, you could say. 22 00:02:54.250 --> 00:03:00.219 Steve Wilson: I just really loved the idea of… in contrast to what my coursework felt like, where it was more… 23 00:03:00.960 --> 00:03:13.840 Steve Wilson: We know the answer, we know you can get here, let's figure out how to do that. Research was, we don't really know what the answer is. We don't know if there is an answer, but we're gonna try this because we think this is an important thing to work on. 24 00:03:13.990 --> 00:03:20.080 Steve Wilson: And I really loved working on those kind of projects, And… 25 00:03:20.220 --> 00:03:25.710 Steve Wilson: I think that went well. And I started asking more about how 26 00:03:26.510 --> 00:03:29.539 Steve Wilson: I could get more involved in research, and… 27 00:03:30.320 --> 00:03:36.340 Steve Wilson: my professor said, why did… did you think about going to grad school? Maybe you could do a PhD, and I said. 28 00:03:36.480 --> 00:03:41.810 Steve Wilson: I don't have any more money. You know, undergrad is kind of the end of the line for me, I need to go get a job. 29 00:03:42.250 --> 00:03:49.179 Steve Wilson: And that's when I learned the thing I think everyone should know, you know, especially in STEM, 30 00:03:49.690 --> 00:04:03.340 Steve Wilson: almost any PhD program that you'll go to is fully funded, which means maybe you're not making as much as you would for an industry job, but tuition's covered, health insurance is covered, and you have a stipend that's, you know, enough to live off of. 31 00:04:03.730 --> 00:04:12.610 Steve Wilson: And so that knowledge itself kind of flipped everything for me, where I realized it was a… financially, it was an option in the first place. And I wouldn't have known, I'd… 32 00:04:12.720 --> 00:04:15.290 Steve Wilson: Always assumed PhD was something… 33 00:04:15.960 --> 00:04:31.260 Steve Wilson: kind of out of reach for me, personally, just because of my situation, but learning that, you know, it could be financially possible, learning that it was actually very research-focused, it wasn't just, I would be going to take 5 more years of courses. 34 00:04:31.340 --> 00:04:37.520 Steve Wilson: Which is kind of what I had assumed it was when you did a PhD, you just took really hard courses the whole time. 35 00:04:37.660 --> 00:04:46.530 Steve Wilson: But it's not that. It really is almost like an apprenticeship learning how to do research, with a little bit of coursework in there as well. 36 00:04:46.860 --> 00:04:50.740 Steve Wilson: And that sounded really appealing to me, so that was… 37 00:04:50.990 --> 00:04:55.480 Steve Wilson: Kind of my final year of undergrad that this all started happening. 38 00:04:55.810 --> 00:04:59.639 Steve Wilson: And I started looking at schools, I started applying, 39 00:05:01.170 --> 00:05:07.709 Steve Wilson: probably still could have prepared better and learned more, but, you know, I put out my best shot and, 40 00:05:08.850 --> 00:05:12.730 Steve Wilson: started applying for PhD programs, basically, right from there. 41 00:05:12.990 --> 00:05:15.959 Steve Wilson: And that was how that decision came to be. 42 00:05:16.870 --> 00:05:29.119 Christopher Lewis: And I know you made the decision, finally, to attend the University of Michigan for a PhD program, and in that PhD program, you received both a master's and a PhD. 43 00:05:29.520 --> 00:05:44.190 Christopher Lewis: Talk to me about that decision-making process for yourself, because you said you started looking at programs. So, what did you do in that process for yourself, and what was it about the University of Michigan that made you decide that that was the right program for you? 44 00:05:45.670 --> 00:05:53.080 Steve Wilson: Right, okay, so… During my undergrad, I got… Pretty interested in… 45 00:05:55.640 --> 00:06:01.769 Steve Wilson: The combination slash overlap between computer science and psychology or cognitive science. 46 00:06:01.870 --> 00:06:10.100 Steve Wilson: Because I had actually started out a psychology major during my undergrad. Psychology pre-med, actually, and then… 47 00:06:10.250 --> 00:06:20.780 Steve Wilson: for various reasons, ended up switching to computer science. But I had still always been super interested in the aspects of human behavior, how people interact, cognition, things like that. 48 00:06:21.050 --> 00:06:28.519 Steve Wilson: So I was super interested in that as a starting point, and I think that led a lot of my search for 49 00:06:28.760 --> 00:06:30.549 Steve Wilson: Who are the people 50 00:06:30.780 --> 00:06:50.509 Steve Wilson: working at that intersection, who would be doing something related to computer science, but also where I'd be able to do something related to psychology or cognitive science. So, I just started looking around online to see where are these researchers who are doing this kind of stuff, and I found some amazing people all around the world doing really cool things. 51 00:06:50.910 --> 00:06:55.150 Steve Wilson: And… Started looking at… 52 00:06:55.350 --> 00:07:06.179 Steve Wilson: the PhD programs where they were taking students, and that kind of gave me a short list of potential programs, to apply for, where I thought. 53 00:07:06.530 --> 00:07:15.120 Steve Wilson: This is research I'd be super excited about working on. If I was able to be fortunate to get a position working with any of these people, I would be pretty happy. 54 00:07:15.550 --> 00:07:19.830 Steve Wilson: And that would kind of allow me to build off of the background that I had. 55 00:07:20.330 --> 00:07:27.260 Steve Wilson: And… One of those programs was the University of Michigan, I… 56 00:07:28.220 --> 00:07:37.390 Steve Wilson: applied to the program. I… I think another criteria, in addition, which Michigan has, which was a funding guarantee. 57 00:07:37.680 --> 00:07:45.949 Steve Wilson: Which is something I talked about before, but, you know, the financials were a big thing for me. And not every school has the same kind of funding guarantee. 58 00:07:47.230 --> 00:07:55.579 Steve Wilson: University of Michigan had a 5-year guaranteed funding for all PhD students who were admitted into the College of Engineering, which was pretty appealing to me. 59 00:07:55.740 --> 00:08:00.820 Steve Wilson: To know that I would be able to make good progress and not have to worry about 60 00:08:00.990 --> 00:08:14.529 Steve Wilson: funding. And a number of other schools had similar programs that I kind of exclusively applied to those kind of programs who also had faculty, were working in this type of intersection area, and… 61 00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:23.440 Steve Wilson: I think I eventually ended up going for in-person interviews at 3 or 4 universities. 62 00:08:25.030 --> 00:08:35.010 Steve Wilson: they all felt great when I was there, and I think U of M was the last one, so sometimes I wonder if there was a recency bias there, but each one, I think, impressed me more than the previous one. 63 00:08:35.250 --> 00:08:42.400 Steve Wilson: But I really felt… that I could connect and relate to the students when I visited. 64 00:08:42.510 --> 00:08:46.209 Steve Wilson: In a way that felt different from some of the other places. 65 00:08:46.580 --> 00:08:55.659 Steve Wilson: And there were not just one faculty, but a number of different faculty at the University of Michigan who I felt were very strong in the areas I was interested in. 66 00:08:56.250 --> 00:09:11.639 Steve Wilson: So, I felt that that was also very safe to have as a, you know, what if somebody leaves, or what if it doesn't work out with a certain faculty member? I felt pretty confident that I would be able to find someone that I was happy working with for… 67 00:09:12.320 --> 00:09:15.599 Steve Wilson: You know, 5 or 6 years on research. 68 00:09:15.740 --> 00:09:22.240 Steve Wilson: And I'm also… grew up in Michigan, so, there was that pull to be… 69 00:09:22.360 --> 00:09:30.469 Steve Wilson: within driving distance of home and things like that was nice. So all of those things kind of converged to make it feel like it was the right decision. 70 00:09:32.570 --> 00:09:46.629 Christopher Lewis: So, in transitioning into a graduate program, there is always a transition, because the way in which you're educated at an undergraduate level is typically different than what you're being asked to do at a graduate level. 71 00:09:46.810 --> 00:10:04.400 Christopher Lewis: the rigor is different, the expectations in the classroom are going to be different, and you do have to go through a transition for yourself to be able to find that groove and find that… that ability to be able to understand, okay, what am I being expected to do, and how can I best do that? So. 72 00:10:04.590 --> 00:10:09.200 Christopher Lewis: You were able to find success in this journey that you went on. 73 00:10:10.110 --> 00:10:16.820 Christopher Lewis: What did you have to do to be able to set yourself up for success as you transitioned into the program? 74 00:10:17.180 --> 00:10:24.620 Christopher Lewis: And what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout the entire graduate school experience? 75 00:10:27.250 --> 00:10:35.130 Steve Wilson: this isn't good, repeatable advice, but I think I got very lucky a few times, especially at the beginning, because I think I actually… 76 00:10:36.120 --> 00:10:47.370 Steve Wilson: didn't prepare in the best way possible. I don't think I fully understood what a PhD program was, to be honest, when I started. I knew it was about research, I knew I was gonna be working on 77 00:10:47.500 --> 00:10:50.320 Steve Wilson: interesting stuff, and I was very excited about it. 78 00:10:50.760 --> 00:10:55.759 Steve Wilson: But… I still don't think I fully understood what it meant to… 79 00:10:56.110 --> 00:11:10.890 Steve Wilson: do a dissertation, and really get involved in this longer-term, not just a summer research position, but, you know, really trying to make a contribution, sustained contribution in a field, and what went into that, and how do you prepare yourself as a 80 00:11:11.340 --> 00:11:14.229 Steve Wilson: Developing into a researcher from someone who's 81 00:11:15.050 --> 00:11:19.879 Steve Wilson: Been used to being handed assignments for things and studying for exams and all of that. 82 00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:26.620 Steve Wilson: I think I could have prepared a lot more, probably by talking to more people 83 00:11:27.150 --> 00:11:34.150 Steve Wilson: in PhD programs, or who had gone through similar experiences, or finding… there are actually tons of great resources online, which I… 84 00:11:34.340 --> 00:11:37.020 Steve Wilson: I'm not sure I knew even what to search for. 85 00:11:37.130 --> 00:11:41.849 Steve Wilson: when I was an undergraduate, but a lot of people who have written about their experiences, 86 00:11:41.950 --> 00:11:44.759 Steve Wilson: Through blog posts or other things like that, which… 87 00:11:44.970 --> 00:11:51.250 Steve Wilson: I only found later and thought, this… wow, this would have been really… valuable to me early on. 88 00:11:51.800 --> 00:11:56.749 Steve Wilson: so some of it was learning as I was going, and then some of it was, 89 00:11:57.260 --> 00:12:06.249 Steve Wilson: you know, as I mentioned, the luck thing, I think, comes into play with my own advisor, who was not actually at the University of Michigan when I applied. 90 00:12:06.440 --> 00:12:11.629 Steve Wilson: So I made that comment about there being several faculty that I thought I might work with. 91 00:12:11.790 --> 00:12:14.170 Steve Wilson: The person I ended up working with wasn't one of them. 92 00:12:14.650 --> 00:12:23.210 Steve Wilson: And… She actually started the same semester I did, coming from another institution, and was a new faculty member. 93 00:12:23.520 --> 00:12:33.580 Steve Wilson: And the way I remember it, it was, she sent an email to the new PhD student saying there was a project related to computer science and psychology and language and… 94 00:12:34.120 --> 00:12:44.349 Steve Wilson: if anyone's interested in that kind of research, to come talk to her. And that was, you know, as I described before, kind of exactly the thing I was interested in, so I… 95 00:12:44.750 --> 00:12:46.470 Steve Wilson: Set up a meeting. 96 00:12:46.860 --> 00:13:02.990 Steve Wilson: We started kind of tentatively working on something, and then that became my entire dissertation. So, in some ways, I feel like I stumbled into that path, which is what ended up working very well for me, in the long run. But if I… 97 00:13:03.660 --> 00:13:22.249 Steve Wilson: if I would give advice to people, it probably wouldn't be just go somewhere and hope you find the best advisor by chance. It would be do your homework beforehand and figure out what it looks like to be a student in their lab, even looking at some of the trajectories of their own, you know, the other students who work in that research lab and things like that. 98 00:13:22.590 --> 00:13:28.360 Steve Wilson: Other things to be successful, I think, was… 99 00:13:28.810 --> 00:13:31.079 Steve Wilson: I, I really do think, 100 00:13:31.610 --> 00:13:36.440 Steve Wilson: My undergrad education at Taylor prepared me fairly well for a lot of the… 101 00:13:36.770 --> 00:13:42.649 Steve Wilson: CS coursework. I think there was a good, solid technical background that I had. 102 00:13:42.790 --> 00:13:51.809 Steve Wilson: I found grad school, especially at University of Michigan, to have a bigger emphasis on some of the, like, math and theory components. 103 00:13:51.970 --> 00:13:55.579 Steve Wilson: of the field of computer science, which I… 104 00:13:55.730 --> 00:13:57.409 Steve Wilson: Had to do some catching up. 105 00:13:58.060 --> 00:14:00.510 Steve Wilson: I would say, but I think you… 106 00:14:01.380 --> 00:14:03.360 Steve Wilson: I think the undergraduate degree is… 107 00:14:03.500 --> 00:14:14.410 Steve Wilson: maybe this is kind of cliche, but it's learning how to learn about things on your own, and I feel like I was kind of able to get that to the point that if there were things that were thrown at me in my master's, that 108 00:14:14.920 --> 00:14:16.500 Steve Wilson: May have been a gap. 109 00:14:16.660 --> 00:14:23.570 Steve Wilson: I kind of had the ability to identify that and do a little bit of self-study to catch up. 110 00:14:23.670 --> 00:14:44.940 Steve Wilson: or rely on other classmates, you know, make some friends, study together, that kind of thing, and get through some of that coursework, which was definitely challenging at times for the… you know, this was for the master's component of my program, where you… you did the coursework that would be involved in a master's during the first two years of your PhD, while you're also getting started with your research. 111 00:14:45.130 --> 00:14:51.020 Steve Wilson: So, yeah, there were some… Challenges there, just getting used to, 112 00:14:51.320 --> 00:14:55.730 Steve Wilson: Maybe a different level of courses and having some of those different areas covered. 113 00:14:55.950 --> 00:15:04.410 Steve Wilson: But yeah, I think those are some of the things. I don't know, yeah. 114 00:15:04.630 --> 00:15:07.300 Steve Wilson: Maybe that… I'll leave it there for now. 115 00:15:07.870 --> 00:15:16.210 Christopher Lewis: I guess as you look back, you've gotten through the master's and the doctorate, you went to do a postdoc as well, and you continue to do that. 116 00:15:16.730 --> 00:15:25.930 Christopher Lewis: If you could go back in time prior to starting in the master's degree, how would you prepare academically or professionally before starting graduate school? 117 00:15:27.970 --> 00:15:34.229 Steve Wilson: for my PhD, I think, like, before, yeah, PhD or Master's, 118 00:15:35.690 --> 00:15:41.770 Steve Wilson: maybe getting a bit more immersed in the research, the field that I was getting into from a… 119 00:15:42.500 --> 00:15:48.250 Steve Wilson: What's happening now perspective, not the historic, fundamental stuff, which is covered in your courses, but… 120 00:15:48.570 --> 00:15:57.739 Steve Wilson: I don't know if I would have been able to convince myself to do this, but if I could have spent the summer before reading a lot of research papers, for example, that were kind of the core 121 00:15:57.940 --> 00:16:03.469 Steve Wilson: pieces, or very recent trends. Because there was a lot to learn about 122 00:16:03.890 --> 00:16:12.139 Steve Wilson: Not what has this field been like for… in 50… the past 50 years, but especially in the past 2 or 3 years, what are the trends, what's going on? 123 00:16:12.360 --> 00:16:17.009 Steve Wilson: getting used to being able to read a research paper, I think, is one of those things that 124 00:16:17.400 --> 00:16:29.960 Steve Wilson: takes practice. It's almost like an exercise, mental muscle type of thing, more so than a thing you can just teach, here's how to read a research paper. Obviously, there are some tips, but really, you have to do it. You just have to do it. 125 00:16:30.880 --> 00:16:37.479 Steve Wilson: looking at, talks from people, which are often posted online, like, on YouTube, from leaders in the field. 126 00:16:37.690 --> 00:16:41.959 Steve Wilson: Hearing what they have to say, what people are writing about, to get… 127 00:16:42.100 --> 00:16:46.150 Steve Wilson: very involved in some of that, and then… 128 00:16:46.300 --> 00:16:56.739 Steve Wilson: Yeah, if there are topics that would be background, if you were pivoting toward a different field for your graduate degree, I know that's fairly common, where I would see people from 129 00:16:57.930 --> 00:17:10.289 Steve Wilson: a range of other fields who want to do a master's in computer science, for example. I had classmates who had backgrounds all the way through music. I knew someone who's a music undergrad and then did CS masters, or sometimes people do a bit of a shift. 130 00:17:10.440 --> 00:17:11.790 Steve Wilson: So… 131 00:17:11.900 --> 00:17:19.989 Steve Wilson: a little bit of self-study, I think, on some of those concepts that are used across a lot of courses. For me, I actually did do a little bit of… 132 00:17:22.099 --> 00:17:28.330 Steve Wilson: study of some math concepts in the summer before, that I felt like I needed to catch up on. 133 00:17:28.620 --> 00:17:36.420 Steve Wilson: So those kind of things, but I think if you can hit the ground running, kind of having a good sense of where is this field 134 00:17:36.670 --> 00:17:38.290 Steve Wilson: at right now. 135 00:17:38.540 --> 00:17:47.060 Steve Wilson: Even if you don't understand all of it, but knowing the trends, not in just a buzzword way, but what are people who are working on this actually talking about it can be… 136 00:17:47.300 --> 00:17:51.350 Steve Wilson: extremely helpful for, like, getting kickstart as a researcher. 137 00:17:54.480 --> 00:18:02.289 Christopher Lewis: And as you just go into a doctorate program, and you are moving into that next phase of your life. 138 00:18:04.060 --> 00:18:20.899 Christopher Lewis: how… there takes a… there's a lot of things that you have to balance, and a lot of hats that you have to wear. You're not only a student, but you are a… you're still… you are… you're still a son, you're a… you could be… you have a significant other, there's lots of different things that you have to juggle. 139 00:18:20.900 --> 00:18:30.579 Christopher Lewis: Talk to me about balance for yourself, and how did you balance school with work and family and personal responsibilities while you were going through that graduate school process? 140 00:18:31.260 --> 00:18:34.170 Steve Wilson: Yeah, definitely a big challenge. 141 00:18:34.750 --> 00:18:43.020 Steve Wilson: because it is a… it's a thing, you can kind of give as much time as… as you want to it, right? Like, there's always more you can do. 142 00:18:43.310 --> 00:18:48.129 Steve Wilson: When you're in one of these graduate programs, I think, or more that you feel that you could be doing. 143 00:18:50.030 --> 00:19:00.839 Steve Wilson: So, yeah, I think part of it was balancing schedules with, my partner, so I was married the entire time through 144 00:19:01.150 --> 00:19:05.020 Steve Wilson: graduate school. My wife worked… 145 00:19:05.450 --> 00:19:09.709 Steve Wilson: For the first while, night shifts at the hospital. 146 00:19:09.930 --> 00:19:16.210 Steve Wilson: There in Ann Arbor as well, so there was some convenience to that, because we were both able to 147 00:19:16.840 --> 00:19:24.089 Steve Wilson: live without really needing a car. I mean, I could pick up the bus to where I worked, and we lived near the hospital where she worked. 148 00:19:24.320 --> 00:19:30.460 Steve Wilson: We did our thing there. And that led me to… Doing a lot of work. 149 00:19:30.660 --> 00:19:35.450 Steve Wilson: Late at night, because that was when she was working. 150 00:19:37.040 --> 00:19:46.799 Steve Wilson: And that was when I felt like I could kind of lock in, and I wasn't getting a lot of emails or other kind of distractions, and having those, like, set aside solid times of 151 00:19:47.410 --> 00:19:54.419 Steve Wilson: productivity, where I'm sitting down. You know, a lot of my work was being at the keyboard in front of the computer, you know. 152 00:19:54.740 --> 00:19:59.940 Steve Wilson: Whether it's writing code, running experiments, writing papers, reading papers, that kind of thing. 153 00:20:00.220 --> 00:20:06.159 Steve Wilson: And finding the time when I could regularly do that was useful. 154 00:20:07.960 --> 00:20:18.929 Steve Wilson: but then also making sure to have time that's not for that, that works with other people's schedules. So there were certain periods of time where 155 00:20:19.430 --> 00:20:20.360 Steve Wilson: I would… 156 00:20:20.870 --> 00:20:27.490 Steve Wilson: Be home, and be around, and not working on stuff, which is the time that we're both awake. 157 00:20:28.900 --> 00:20:36.799 Steve Wilson: And able to spend time together and do things with other friends in the area. We had a good number of mutual friends, I think. 158 00:20:37.180 --> 00:20:44.400 Steve Wilson: around Ann Arbor that, you know, would pull me away from the lab, which was a nice thing, I think, to make those connections, and not just be a… 159 00:20:45.070 --> 00:20:48.370 Steve Wilson: I'm gonna go put my head down and not talk to anyone. 160 00:20:48.480 --> 00:20:51.689 Steve Wilson: I actually found it really valuable to have a lot of friends who are not 161 00:20:51.860 --> 00:21:08.519 Steve Wilson: PhD students in computer science also. I definitely had friends in the program, but having friends doing other things kind of gives you the opportunity to step outside of that a little bit, when you're doing things with them, hearing about what's going on in their lives and things like that, so… 162 00:21:08.780 --> 00:21:11.129 Steve Wilson: That's also useful. And then… 163 00:21:11.350 --> 00:21:20.680 Steve Wilson: Like I said, the University of Michigan was located near where I grew up, so I did have family nearby, which I'm definitely very fortunate. I know not everyone 164 00:21:20.950 --> 00:21:25.139 Steve Wilson: Has the opportunity to go to grad school near where they lived. 165 00:21:25.270 --> 00:21:30.589 Steve Wilson: But it was possible for me to, like, take a weekend trip and drive home and see 166 00:21:30.710 --> 00:21:33.150 Steve Wilson: My parents and things like that, so… 167 00:21:33.460 --> 00:21:36.699 Steve Wilson: That also happened fairly regularly, I think. 168 00:21:37.290 --> 00:21:40.749 Steve Wilson: But, yeah, I would say it's… 169 00:21:41.690 --> 00:21:48.199 Steve Wilson: it's challenging. I have kids now, I didn't have kids as a grad student. I think life would have been very different, you know. 170 00:21:48.660 --> 00:21:56.320 Steve Wilson: also balancing being a dad with grad school, and really, I'm not sure how I would have done it other than 171 00:21:56.940 --> 00:22:02.380 Steve Wilson: I don't know, being just very regimented and strict with my time, even more so than I was. 172 00:22:02.620 --> 00:22:09.669 Steve Wilson: But… yeah, I think I… it was already kind of… I felt maxed out, you know, already with… 173 00:22:09.900 --> 00:22:12.360 Steve Wilson: The situation that it was in at the time. 174 00:22:14.840 --> 00:22:31.970 Christopher Lewis: I appreciate you sharing that. Now, I mentioned earlier in passing that after you received your doctorate, you did go and do a post-bac, or a postdoc… go on… you went and did a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh, and 175 00:22:33.010 --> 00:22:52.039 Christopher Lewis: We haven't really talked a lot about that on the show, so I want to have you talk a little bit more about that experience, and what made you decide, after you were done with your doctorate, to take that next step and continue working in a higher education setting, but in a little bit of a different way? 176 00:22:53.560 --> 00:22:55.869 Steve Wilson: Yeah, so that was a great experience. 177 00:22:55.990 --> 00:22:57.400 Steve Wilson: To start. 178 00:22:57.840 --> 00:23:03.779 Steve Wilson: I started thinking about postdocs toward the end of my PhD, 179 00:23:04.270 --> 00:23:06.040 Steve Wilson: I think as a way to… 180 00:23:06.850 --> 00:23:12.329 Steve Wilson: A couple things I wanted to achieve with that, I guess. One was to broaden my research experience a bit. 181 00:23:12.680 --> 00:23:23.199 Steve Wilson: I feel… I think the purpose of a PhD is that you're very focused, and you're working on one very specific line of work, sustained over a period of time, so that you can make a contribution to the field. 182 00:23:23.580 --> 00:23:25.539 Steve Wilson: But I had this feeling, like. 183 00:23:26.310 --> 00:23:32.480 Steve Wilson: I just had worked on this one thing for so long. I wanted to get a little bit more breadth. I was… 184 00:23:32.640 --> 00:23:38.459 Steve Wilson: Definitely, in the back of my mind, thinking about faculty jobs down the road. 185 00:23:38.670 --> 00:23:41.819 Steve Wilson: But thought that it would be valuable to… 186 00:23:42.220 --> 00:23:46.070 Steve Wilson: Have a little bit more breadth in my research experience. 187 00:23:46.170 --> 00:23:48.229 Steve Wilson: And at the same time. 188 00:23:48.560 --> 00:23:55.660 Steve Wilson: the international experience was appealing to me. I had always lived in the same country my whole life. 189 00:23:55.990 --> 00:23:58.089 Steve Wilson: And it was kind of a… 190 00:23:58.940 --> 00:24:04.230 Steve Wilson: goal of mine to spend some time outside of the United States at some point. 191 00:24:04.360 --> 00:24:18.280 Steve Wilson: Just to experience living somewhere else. And I do think that was really valuable for me. And I thought a postdoc was a great opportunity to do that because of the fact that they're usually fixed-term contract type of positions, so it wasn't… it didn't feel like… 192 00:24:18.460 --> 00:24:26.929 Steve Wilson: a commitment to move to this place indefinitely or something. It was, you know, I knew going in this was a two-year term. 193 00:24:27.120 --> 00:24:28.270 Steve Wilson: Kind of thing. 194 00:24:28.450 --> 00:24:34.480 Steve Wilson: And it was a way to kind of see what it's like in a new place, get some more experience. 195 00:24:34.630 --> 00:24:42.429 Steve Wilson: continue doing research. I mean, the position I found, I think, was a really natural progression for my PhD work to expand it a little bit. 196 00:24:42.970 --> 00:24:46.680 Steve Wilson: And it also gave a little bit more breathing room, 197 00:24:47.060 --> 00:24:55.610 Steve Wilson: Where I didn't feel like I had to be writing my dissertation, defending my dissertation, and applying for faculty jobs, which is also an exhausting 198 00:24:56.150 --> 00:24:59.010 Steve Wilson: Process, I think, you know. 199 00:24:59.460 --> 00:25:10.749 Steve Wilson: to apply for faculty positions, and doing all of that at the same time. So, a postdoc also helped to space that out a little bit, where I was finishing my dissertation, and then postdoc applications, pretty… 200 00:25:11.150 --> 00:25:17.439 Steve Wilson: light, I would say, definitely compared to applying for tenure-track faculty jobs. A lot of those 201 00:25:17.620 --> 00:25:29.769 Steve Wilson: just come from word of mouth, or networking, or, you know, so-and-so just got a grant, and they have a postdoc written in, and they need someone to start in 4 months. That kind of stuff is pretty common, I think. So… 202 00:25:30.640 --> 00:25:36.829 Steve Wilson: Yeah, looking at those positions was also a nice step to… 203 00:25:37.260 --> 00:25:40.509 Steve Wilson: you know, build onto my career, I think, and… 204 00:25:40.670 --> 00:25:45.790 Steve Wilson: Personally, I just found it a really valuable and enjoyable experience, too. 205 00:25:50.680 --> 00:26:00.550 Christopher Lewis: Now, as you think about individuals that are thinking about graduate school, whether it's in a technological field, business, health, whatever it may be. 206 00:26:01.920 --> 00:26:08.879 Christopher Lewis: What are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? 207 00:26:12.720 --> 00:26:17.310 Steve Wilson: I think you want to come in with a clear idea of… Why you're doing it? 208 00:26:17.850 --> 00:26:19.450 Steve Wilson: What you want to get out of it? 209 00:26:20.250 --> 00:26:23.809 Steve Wilson: And take ownership of your experience as a graduate student. 210 00:26:24.780 --> 00:26:32.600 Steve Wilson: So, what I mean is not coming in and saying, I'm not sure, I might do this, I'll go and see… 211 00:26:33.100 --> 00:26:39.150 Steve Wilson: Maybe I'll do the minimum of what they ask me, get the piece of paper at the end. 212 00:26:39.340 --> 00:26:42.759 Steve Wilson: And that will open doors for me, or something like that. 213 00:26:42.940 --> 00:26:53.610 Steve Wilson: I kind of feel like that's… it's an approach to graduate school, but I don't think it's going to really maximize what you get out of it. I think, what's really helpful is knowing I want to… 214 00:26:54.640 --> 00:27:07.760 Steve Wilson: achieve a certain kind of goal longer term, and I know this program's going to help me get there, and I want to make the most out of it to help build my profile, my skills development, those kind of things during that program, which means 215 00:27:09.130 --> 00:27:13.949 Steve Wilson: really thinking about what you want to learn, which… there are things you can learn 216 00:27:15.130 --> 00:27:33.249 Steve Wilson: beyond just the classroom. Even in the classroom, I think you can go beyond what's just given to you directly by professors by looking for ways to… I mean, I think we have a lot of, project-based kind of courses here at U of M Flint, for example, but those kind of things, I think, lend themselves nicely to 217 00:27:33.690 --> 00:27:45.019 Steve Wilson: students exploring things that match their interests. If you have the chance to do things like projects or, research components within courses, where you're able to explore those things that are going to help 218 00:27:45.550 --> 00:27:51.790 Steve Wilson: Act as a perfect stepping stone, or give you the skills that you want to talk about when you're applying for jobs later. 219 00:27:52.000 --> 00:28:02.059 Steve Wilson: That you can kind of control, you should really do that, but even outside of the classroom, I think the relationships during grad school are extremely valuable. 220 00:28:02.270 --> 00:28:06.920 Steve Wilson: I think I was always… had this impression of networking as this… 221 00:28:07.380 --> 00:28:14.880 Steve Wilson: you know, people in suits shaking hands with each other kind of thing, but really, I think a lot of the most valuable networking I've done is… 222 00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:23.449 Steve Wilson: making friends in grad school, for example, which sounds maybe too easy, but these are the people who are 223 00:28:23.870 --> 00:28:32.459 Steve Wilson: they're the future leaders in your field, right? Like, you're going to school with other people who are passionate about whatever you're studying, that want to get a graduate degree. 224 00:28:32.630 --> 00:28:50.370 Steve Wilson: it's a really unique opportunity to be in the same place consistently with that kind of cohort of people for several years, and they are probably going to be doing really impressive, amazing things in 5, 10 years. And those people that you know now, I mean, I don't think… 225 00:28:50.480 --> 00:29:03.849 Steve Wilson: you should think of relationships as this, oh, I'm only being friends so that you'll help me later, but… I mean, when I think of what my friends from grad school are doing now, it's, you know, they're all doing amazing things, and I have this network of people 226 00:29:04.130 --> 00:29:11.890 Steve Wilson: Around the world, in industry, in academia, doing cool things that I didn't… go to… 227 00:29:12.240 --> 00:29:24.029 Steve Wilson: you know, show up at knocking on doors at Google or something to know people at Google, it's just you knew people from grad school who ended up there, or those kinds of things. So I think that's a really valuable thing, is going… 228 00:29:24.290 --> 00:29:31.409 Steve Wilson: Again, beyond just what's asked of you as a grad student, but finding people around other opportunities if there are, like. 229 00:29:31.830 --> 00:29:41.409 Steve Wilson: clubs or resources that help you with, developing in your area of specialization. If you can get involved in research projects, even as a master's student. 230 00:29:41.930 --> 00:29:49.099 Steve Wilson: I think research can be valuable if you find the right project. I mean, not everyone wants to do a PhD, or wants to go into a research field. 231 00:29:49.440 --> 00:29:59.160 Steve Wilson: But you can also think of research as, like, a very open-ended way to work with someone who's kind of an expert on this topic that you wanted to study. 232 00:29:59.530 --> 00:30:02.660 Steve Wilson: And… 233 00:30:03.020 --> 00:30:13.429 Steve Wilson: I mean, make it a negotiation if you're trying to figure out a project to work on. Maybe they don't exactly do this thing that you want to get the skill, but they do something pretty close, and you can say, hey, I really want to… 234 00:30:14.020 --> 00:30:15.960 Steve Wilson: Get some experience with… 235 00:30:16.380 --> 00:30:26.600 Steve Wilson: whatever it is. For AI right now, you know a hot thing is dealing with agents, so I really want to learn how to do something with, you know, agentic AI. Is there something we can work on in your lab that would… 236 00:30:26.790 --> 00:30:36.599 Steve Wilson: fit with your research goals, but also would give me some hands-on, direct experience with Agentic AI, or whatever the thing is that you really want that skill. 237 00:30:36.960 --> 00:30:41.669 Steve Wilson: That's gonna be super valuable, not just for research positions later, but… 238 00:30:41.780 --> 00:30:53.070 Steve Wilson: for an industry position where you can say, hey, I spent the semester, or a year, or whatever it was, building these kind of tools that's exactly the thing your company's LinkedIn post is looking for. 239 00:30:53.190 --> 00:30:55.049 Steve Wilson: For… 240 00:30:55.290 --> 00:31:05.379 Steve Wilson: their purposes, and I learned from this person who has expertise in the field of how to make sure that it's done correctly, and for an impact, and all of those kind of things. 241 00:31:05.610 --> 00:31:12.540 Steve Wilson: I think that can be useful. But yeah, just being very on the, 242 00:31:12.750 --> 00:31:14.950 Steve Wilson: On the lookout for opportunities. 243 00:31:15.490 --> 00:31:18.460 Steve Wilson: While you're there, during graduate school, to… 244 00:31:18.880 --> 00:31:23.509 Steve Wilson: To do things that, are gonna set you up for success in the future. 245 00:31:23.800 --> 00:31:31.319 Steve Wilson: And talking to other people who are in similar situations, and seeing what they're doing, and those kind of things, I just think is super valuable. 246 00:31:31.630 --> 00:31:34.400 Steve Wilson: In addition to the coursework, which is gonna… 247 00:31:34.800 --> 00:31:37.430 Steve Wilson: You know, maybe get you another level of, 248 00:31:37.700 --> 00:31:42.399 Steve Wilson: Beyond your undergraduate courses in a bit more advanced level of a lot of different… 249 00:31:42.670 --> 00:31:46.349 Steve Wilson: Areas, and maybe allow you to specialize a little bit more. 250 00:31:49.950 --> 00:32:12.040 Christopher Lewis: Well, Steve, I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your journey today. I really appreciate you taking the time to be able to share these words of wisdom and to kind of think back and relive some of the experiences, but also share some great tips, some great ideas for individuals to think about as they're starting their journey for themselves. And I wish you all the best. 251 00:32:12.680 --> 00:32:13.430 Steve Wilson: Thank you.
Trusting the Process: A PA Student's Guide to Graduate School Success
In the latest episode of "Victors in Grad School," Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Edie Lerner, a second-year physician assistant (PA) student at the University of Michigan, Flint, whose journey offers a powerful blend of inspiration and practical advice for anyone considering—or currently navigating—graduate school. From the moment Edie Lerner shares her story, the theme of intentionality stands out. Edie's path to graduate school was anything but rushed. After double majoring in Biology and Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, she took two and a half years off. During this gap, she gathered hands-on experience in healthcare, worked as a teaching assistant, and developed both the skills and self-understanding necessary to thrive in a rigorous PA program. As Edie notes, the decision to pursue graduate education isn't just about academics—it's about being truly ready as a person for the journey ahead. A recurring message throughout the conversation is the importance of support systems. Edie intentionally sought out programs close to home, valuing proximity to her family and the ability to lean on her loved ones during challenging times (05:29). For her, success in graduate school isn't just about surviving exams or clinical hours—it's about sustaining her well-being through community connections, advocacy, and service. The University of Michigan Flint's focus on leadership and integrated service learning resonated deeply, aligning with Edie's passion for making a meaningful impact beyond the classroom. Transitioning to graduate-level study, Edie speaks candidly about the reality of burnout, adapting study habits, and the need to maintain boundaries. Her approach—setting realistic limits for study hours, making time each week for personal renewal, and actively seeking help from faculty and peers—emphasizes that resilience is built through self-awareness and intentional choices. Through it all, Edie's mantra has become "trust the process." Growth doesn't happen overnight, and every challenge—big or small—shapes who you become as a student and a future professional. Perhaps the most powerful takeaway from this episode is Edie's encouragement to anyone at the starting line: know your "why," lean on your support system, and remember that you are capable. As Dr. Lewis points out, the journey isn't always easy, but the transformation and sense of purpose make it all worthwhile. Whether you're considering grad school or are deep in the trenches yourself, this episode provides practical insights and a comforting reminder—you're not alone in your journey. Ready for motivation and strategies you can apply to your own path? Listen to the full conversation and fuel your drive to succeed. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love that you come back and you come back to learn and grow every week. And the reason for, for that is that you've got this inkling and maybe it's an inkling of just like, hey, maybe I want to do this graduate school thing, or maybe you're a little bit further along. No matter where you are in the journey, it is a journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:40]: You have some idea in your head that you want to either go to graduate school, you've applied to graduate school, maybe you got accepted to graduate school, maybe you're in graduate school, but you want to be successful in this journey, and that's why you're here, and that's why this podcast exists every week. I love being able to talk to individuals that are interested in working toward that graduate school goal for themselves, and I love being able to introduce you to people that have gone before you. They might still be in graduate school, they might have already graduated and are out working and have been in the field for many years. But the commonality is they all went through the journey themselves and you can learn from them. You can learn from the things that worked, the things that didn't work. And, and that's why I bring you different people with different experiences that can share those journeys with you. And today we got another great guest. Edie Lerner is with us. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:32]: And Edie is a second year physician assistant student at the University of Michigan, Flint. She just finished up the first year, moving into the second year, and I'm really excited to be able to have her here. Edie, thanks so much for being here today. Edie Lerner [00:01:44]: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to share a little bit about my journey and share my time at U of M. Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:50]: Well, I'm really excited to be able to have you here as well. And I know that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and you did a double major there, doing a biology degree as well as biopsychology. Cognition, neuroscience, that's a big named degree. But at some point in that journey, and it might have been during college, and you always had the idea for graduate school or I know you left college, went out, did some work, got some experiences before you decided to go to graduate school, Maybe in those first few years after graduate school, something lit up, something sparked, and you said to yourself, I want to keep going and I want to go and become a physician assistant. Bring me back to that point. What was going through your head? Edie Lerner [00:02:35]: Yeah, I started my journey at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and I truly loved learning. I've always enjoyed the sciences most specifically. And I kind of went into undergrad knowing that I wanted to do more higher education afterwards. So I didn't know what that looked like exactly for me. I knew it was something in the healthcare field. I grew up in older adult homes, which my mom works for a company in long term care. And I knew I wanted to continue my journey supporting patients and supporting people through their healthcare experiences. And I didn't know what that looked like for me at the time. Edie Lerner [00:03:13]: I was very young, 18 years old, and I joined Alpha Epsilon Delta, which is a pre health honor society at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. And I got to hear other people's experiences. They were pre med or they were pre pa, which is ultimately what I decided to go into. And I really wanted to make sure that I was ready as a human to go into graduate school because it is a big commitment, education wise, time wise, financially. And so after I graduated from U of M in Ann Arbor, I took about two and a half years off. I worked on my PA school applications, I worked on getting direct patient care with others, and I even was a teaching assistant for a little bit in Denver, which was an amazing experience. And finally, when I went to apply to graduate school, I said, I feel comfortable who I am as a person and I feel ready and capable of taking on this huge next step. So while I knew I wanted to go to graduate school and undergrad, it wasn't until I really worked on myself outside of education and outside of being a student to know I was ready to be a graduate. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:21]: So going through that process and finally figuring out, okay, this is the cycle that I'm going to be applying in. And if you haven't applied to PA school, physician assistants apply in a cycle. So that means that at one point in the year, all PA programs will open up their applications. You apply during that cycle, and then you're considered for the next start period for that program. That could be in the fall, it could be in the winter. There's lots of different times. So talking back at that cycle, Edie, you decided it was time you decided to put in the application. Well, when you applied, I'm sure that you had done some research and started to figure out for yourself what programs do I really want to apply to? Because there's many different physician assistant programs out there. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:05]: And getting into a PA program is quite competitive and there's a lot of applicants. So talk to me about how did you whittle that list down? How did you identify which schools you were going to apply to? And ultimately how did you decide that the University of Michigan Flint was the right program for you? Edie Lerner [00:05:22]: Yeah, that's a great question. Applying to PA school and getting into PA School is a whole feat in itself. So when I was applying, I really valued programs that were close to home. I'm from Farmington Hills, Michigan, which is about an hour away from Flint. And I knew PA school is an incredibly treacherous journey. Learning and being in uncomfortable situations. And I wanted to be able to have my support system close to me. It's so important that I'm able to go home on the weekend to see my mom for dinner. Edie Lerner [00:05:53]: And just that really kept me sane throughout my school journey so far. Other things about the University of Michigan Flint specifically I really valued was some of the pillars of our program which are leadership and advocacy. I still work on Perfect Pair, which is a national nonprofit, as the director of chapters. And we work to pair college students with older adults living in long term care facilities to combat loneliness and isolation. And the University of Michigan Flint in my PA program has an entire leadership and advocacy project that we actually get to start working on this summer, which I'm very excited for, where we get to go out into the community and do more research and outreach in an area that we're interested in. And so that was one part of the program that was really aligned with my goals and values. Especially because being a leader and being an advocate not only for patients but also for community in more public health spaces is something that is incredibly valuable to me personally. Another thing that I really loved was the fact that we do integrated service learning in our program. Edie Lerner [00:07:00]: So embedd one of our courses. We are assigned to go to different community bases. So right now, or actually it just finished because we're going into our clinical phase, but we would go into the hospital and participate in the Hurley Help program, which is also supporting older adults who are admitted to the hospital and combating delirium. And so we would visit with them, sit with them. I love to play uno with the patients that I got to see as long as they wanted to and just hear their stories and be there as another support system outside of their Healthcare staff as a volunteer. And so I think especially with my previous experiences in undergrad and throughout my gap years and in PA school, really being able to serve for the community in a volunteer capacity, getting us prepared to serve the community as a PA has been really valuable to me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:49]: Every student that goes to graduate school has to go through some type of transition for themselves because going through an undergraduate education you're taught in one way, there's certain expectations and the expectations are not the same as the type of expectations that you would get, especially, especially in a health related program where there is a high caliber of learning that has to happen with hands on experience and being able to show mastery. So talk to me about for yourself, as you were transitioning into your graduate program, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success? And as you've continued through not only the first term but your second term and beyond, what have you had to do to maintain that success throughout the journey thus far? Edie Lerner [00:08:35]: Yeah, that's a great question. And to some degree it just happens in PA school specifically, a lot of the jargon surrounding it is that you do not learn the same and you cannot learn the same as you did in undergrad. And I completely back that statement. The reason is we are given so much content and so much learning and so much information because the future of our specific career is supporting people and saving people's lives. And there is so much information that comes with the human body and anatomy. And so with getting that amount of information, you cannot learn the same. So in undergrad I reviewed, I read over things I highlighted and going into BA school, if you try to rewrote, rewrite one PowerPoint, you will, it'll take you three days and that sets you back immensely for studying. So one part of my growing has been academically and learning that active learning, flashcards, doing practice exams that you either find on a website or that you create yourselves are the way that success comes. Edie Lerner [00:09:40]: So really learning how to learn and relearning how to learn as a graduate student has been a big part of my journey as well as knowing in being confident in who I am and knowing when it's time to take a break. I think my first semester of PA school, I have never studied so much in my life. I studied 10 to 12 hours a day, even if we were in lectures. And I became incredibly burnt out, which was a scary feeling because it was my first semester and we had a long road to go until graduation. So after that first semester I decided to make it a point that I would do one thing either with my friends and family or for myself in a week. And that is something I have continued to maintain and hope to maintain throughout my clinical education. Because it is so important to take a step back and know that you can't be studying 24 hours a day. It's impossible. Edie Lerner [00:10:29]: And so learn how you need to learn, as well as maintaining some mental health and connection to your community and support systems that have been there along the way for you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:39]: So, speaking about burnout, I want to delve into that a little bit because you're not the first individual that has talked about having to deal with burnout as they go through a graduate degree. Talk to me about the warning signs that you recognized in yourself or that others recognized in you, and what did you have to do to be able to not only get through that point, but you just mentioned some of the things you had to change, but what were other things that you had to change to be able to make sure that that burnout didn't keep reeling its head? Edie Lerner [00:11:09]: Yeah, burnout is incredibly real, especially in health care. I mean, we are serving people every day. We're talking to people, you know, we're learning every single day still. And so some of the signs I saw was my partner would talk to me and they would say, hey, you know, like, you don't seem okay. I haven't seen you smile in two days. And when you're in the thick of it, studying for four exams that happen within the time span of three days, it's really hard to figure out what you need to do to get over that hurdle. So for me specifically, I took the time during my break between my first semester and second semester to say, okay, I don't want to get into that hole again. I don't want to feel the way I felt during that specific exam week. Edie Lerner [00:11:52]: What are some things that I can implement actively so that I feel prepared and I feel that I have studied enough while I'm still maintaining my own mental health and the things I need to do to stay happy and stay excited to learn and stay excited to be uncomfortable in new learning environments. So I also implemented. I would Never study past 10:30pm 9:00pm and 10:00pm was a little too early for me, but 10:30 was my cutoff, and I also made sure to do that one thing a week. Another thing I did was study actively earlier. So it wasn't until the end of my first semester where I started to understand what my learning looks like to give me success in my exams and in my Patient evaluations. So I started studying for my exams the day that we walked into the classroom. So there wasn't many full days off, but there was a lot of days that I was studying for less hours so that that burnout wouldn't build upon itself, which within such a short time of cramming. Because if I got to the point where I had to cram again, that's when things really started going downhill for me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:00]: One of the other things that I guess that I would ask is this, because being in a program that does have a lot of expectations, and as you are entering into a program, you're still a friend, a daughter, maybe a significant other, you wear a lot of hats, you're a student, and wearing all of those different hats draws from your time, draws from your effort. And you have to figure out where is that optimal balance? What did you have to do to be able to find that balance for yourself? Whether it was with school, work, family, personal responsibilities while you've been in graduate school thus far? Edie Lerner [00:13:37]: Yeah, all of those different hats are so important when you are just living your life. So while I was preparing to go to graduate school, I knew this was two and a half years of my life that I needed to put myself first and put my education first. And so I had a lot of conversations before I even began the program, talking with my family and with my friends, saying, hey, here's my week off. That happens in five months. I would love to set a time to see you and talk to you then, but before then, I'm not sure what my capacity will look like. And that is a really hard conversation to have. And sometimes people didn't take it as seriously. I remember Visit vividly, one of my family members, they said, oh, don't be dramatic. Edie Lerner [00:14:22]: You'll be fine. I'll see you the same amount of time. And that's okay if that's what they need to hear. But I have set those boundaries for myself. And it was really important to set those boundaries so that when I had to say no to a family obligation, that wasn't something important enough for me to miss studying or miss an exam. I could call back to that time and say, hey, this is something I let you know before I started the program. And I have to put my education first and I have to put my studying first. With that being said, I personally have never had to miss something that was important to me to go to and that my family needed me to show up to, whether that meant having a little bit later of a night or an earlier morning to study. Edie Lerner [00:15:04]: Those expectations that I put on myself to be there for my family still maintained. It just looked a little bit different than maybe it would have in the past where I had to leave an event earlier or just wake up earlier to study. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:16]: You've been on campus now for about a year and a half and as you said, you've dealt with different things, whether it be burnout or other issues. Were there any campus resources or student organizations that really help you do to help you support your success in their journey? Edie Lerner [00:15:31]: Thus far, 100%. I don't think as a graduate student you could survive just by yourself on an island. Specifically the Merchi Science Building. It's not a particular organization, but it is a place and I lived there for my didactic education. I really loved utilizing the whiteboards and USAN has a coffee shop and also food that I would go to often on the weekends. In the morning when I was studying on Saturday, it would be, I'm gonna go, but I'm gonna get a coff. It got me there and it helped me start my day. Also in our PA program we have such wonderful faculty. Edie Lerner [00:16:06]: Professor Falls, Professor Moore. They are only an email away or even a phone call away if it's an emergency. And I really think that them having such an open door policy to support their students has been life changing. As a PA student, when the education is so complicated, if I do have a question or if I need some emotional support for a tough time because life does not stop when you're in graduate school. They're always there and that's been a really wonderful resource. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:33]: What specific skills would you say that you had to develop most in graduate school? Edie Lerner [00:16:38]: Yeah, the first skill that comes to mind is adaptability. Every day does not look the same and every exam doesn't look the same. And we are constantly changing what we're learning in terms of body system. If we're learning about the heart versus learning about the lungs, things that worked in one area of studying doesn't look the same in the next area of studying. And so really being able to to adapt to different learning styles and systems, even within the program itself has been really important as well as adapt. I am so uncomfortable sometimes in my program in the best way possible. We talk to standardized patients a lot, so being able to shift and adapt depending on what they're saying and completely new situations that we've never been in. Our last standardized patient was a large surprise to a lot of our cohort. Edie Lerner [00:17:25]: So really being able to adapt in the moment, in seconds in the room with the patient of what you're talking about and what you're expected to do as a PA student, I think has been vital. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:34]: And I already heard you talk about those first exams and burnout and things like that. Was there any other defining moments or turning points within your education thus far that really have shaped either your academic journey or your professional journey for where you're at right now? Edie Lerner [00:17:50]: I think it really comes with just trusting the process. I can't pick out a particular moment, but I am not the same person I was when I stepped into graduate school. There are so many skills and lessons and professional developments that happen within PE school, and I think it happens within every single exam and within every single patient interaction, and by meeting and leaning on an entire group of 50 new students. And so instead of one moment, I think it's just a journey. And we hear it a lot in our program. Trust the process. Trust the process. Trust the process. Edie Lerner [00:18:26]: And it's so true, because we are being built on a knowledge base, but also just a professional base of how to speak to somebody else from the medical field who you've never worked with before. And now you get on a call with them and they're telling you all these things about a patient that you've never met. And now you have to learn how to respond back. And so, especially being in a graduate program where we're being taught to be healthcare providers, we have to be taught interprofessional skills as well. And so not only academically, but also professionally, it's a growing process through all of those little assignments that we're given and through our interprofessional education, education and really learning how to be a healthcare provider in the field. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:09]: Have you found that you built specific relationships with faculty or peers that were especially impactful? And if so, how? Edie Lerner [00:19:17]: My best friend in the program, her name is Emily. She is my lifeline. She is my partner in crime. We studied almost every single day together throughout the program, and I truly do not think I would have made it this far without her. So we do a lot of. Of delegating in terms of who does what to make our study materials, because it takes a lot of time in some ways. So she creates all of our quizlets, and I create our charts that go to all of the different diseases as well as our practice questions that we both use. And so without her and without being able to lean on my community, I wouldn't have been able to pass my exams. Edie Lerner [00:19:55]: There's no way we bounce off each other in Ideas and questions, questions. One of my favorite things we do while we're studying is to just say, can I ask a dumb question? Because it's real and you need somebody and you need support and you need to be able to ask questions. And I think that's really important in grad school as well as our professors. I mean, all of them are super open to asking questions. But Professor Moore is someone we had throughout our entire first year of didactic education, and I really appreciated his learning stuff style in terms of sometimes he said, you're gonna have to learn this on your own, and here's the information I give you. But you're in graduate school, and so when you have questions, come to me. And we learned. And you have to learn, because when you're a provider and a PA out in the field and you're seeing a patient and you've never heard of this disease before, you're gonna have to go do research, and then you can ask questions later. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:50]: As you think back to the beginning and where you were when you first started graduate school, what's something that you wish that someone had told you before you started graduate school? Edie Lerner [00:21:01]: I think really, it's just that you can do it, you will do it, and if you're passionate enough, anything is possible. And I think that graduate programs and getting a graduate degree is so worth it. And personally, something that I really value in higher education and the amount of growing I've done academic, academically, and professionally is so profound. And the amount of things I learned has been amazing and incredible, and I'm just really grateful for this journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:33]: And again, as you look back at your graduate education, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education, Whether it's becoming a physician assistant, going to business school, going into a technological field, whatever it might be that would help them find success sooner? Edie Lerner [00:21:49]: Yeah, I think my number one is write down why you're here before you start. I wrote it down on a sheet of paper, and I pulled it out every once in a while when I needed a little bit of motivation. Going through a tough exam week, I think it's really important to know and really have an idea of the reasons you're here and the reasons you're doing this. And if those are the right reasons, then it will get you through. I also think finding success looks really different for every single person. And so being able to have a support system that can really cheer you on throughout that success. Success has been wonderful and something I've really leaned on. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:28]: Well, Edie, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. Thank you for sharing the ups, the downs, and everything in between. And I think from what you've shared, it's not always going to be roses, it's not always going to be easy, but it's worth it. And as you said, everybody's here, they've been admitted, they can do this. So always have to remember that. And I love that. And I just want to say good luck as you move into your next phase of the PA program, as you're getting out into the clinics and doing, doing all of this other really exciting work that you're going to be able to now take what you've been learning for the past year and a half and putting it into practice. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:05]: I'm excited for you, but also excited to hear how it goes. And I just want to say I wish you all the best. Edie Lerner [00:23:11]: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It's been wonderful being able to share a little bit of my journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:16]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad officemflint. Eduardo.
Lessons in Motivation and Success: Dr. Khalid Malik's Graduate School Journey
Are you contemplating graduate school or already on the journey? The latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" offers an inspiring and practical guide to thriving in higher education, featuring the remarkable story and expert advice of Dr. Khalid Malik, Director of the Graduate Program in Cybersecurity at the University of Michigan-Flint. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, this episode unfolds with Dr. Khalid Malik's path from his undergraduate studies in Pakistan to becoming a leader in cybersecurity in the U.S. The conversation reveals the power of perseverance, mentorship, and adaptability in achieving academic and professional goals. The Power of Motivation and Mentorship Early in the episode, Dr. Khalid Malik credits his family and professors with instilling the value of continuous education, sharing how their support pushed him beyond a bachelor's degree and set him on a global academic path. Their influence helped him pursue a master's, followed by a PhD abroad, despite lucrative job offers after his initial graduation. The takeaway? Seek encouragement from your community and mentorship to fuel your ambition, even when the easier path seems tempting. Embracing Interdisciplinary Research A key theme is the importance of interdisciplinary learning. Dr. Khalid Malik emphasizes that true innovation often lies at the intersections of fields. He shares examples from his own lab, where projects combine AI, computer science, biology, and engineering to solve complex problems like brain disease diagnostics. For students, he advises: build strong fundamentals and remain open to broad, cross-disciplinary work—this not only enriches your education but also enhances your impact and career prospects. The Role of Agility and Communication Moving overseas for his PhD demanded rapid adaptation. Dr. Khalid Malik candidly recounts overcoming language barriers and cultural differences through "agility" and a willingness to listen and learn. He stresses the power of effective communication: expressing your ideas clearly, welcoming feedback, and being persistent when reaching out to faculty opens doors otherwise missed. Navigating the Future with AI A timely takeaway centers on the evolving landscape of technology, especially AI. Dr. Khalid Malik urges students not to fear AI, but to learn its strengths and limitations, integrating it as a tool rather than seeing it as a replacement. Understanding how to work alongside new technologies is, he argues, essential for future-proofing your career. Encouragement to Prospective Students For anyone eyeing grad school, Dr. Khalid Malik and Dr. Christopher Lewis offer essential advice: stay curious, leverage mentorship, embrace interdisciplinary opportunities, and never hesitate to raise your hand for new experiences. Graduate school is more than academics—it's about growth, adaptability, and building meaningful connections. If you're seeking motivation, actionable tips, or simply want to hear a candid success story, don't miss this episode of "Victors in Grad School." Listen in and take your next step toward graduate school success! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week, I am here to walk alongside you as you are going through this graduate school journey that you're on now. You might be at the very beginning, just starting to touch the I place in the sense of being able to figure out what you want to do. Or maybe you already applied, maybe you've been accepted, maybe you're in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:39]: Doesn't matter where you are in this journey, there are things that you can do right now, this minute to help you in being successful on the journey that you're on. And that's why this show exists. That's why this podcast is here, to help you, to walk alongside you and to provide you with some tools for your toolbox to be able to help you, to be able to learn from others along the way that that have done this and will help you in the journey that you're on. That's why every week I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can share the experiences that they had to help you in the experiences that you're going to have. And this week, again, we've got another great guest. Khalid Malik is with us today. And Dr. Malik is a professor at the University of Michigan, Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:21]: He works within our cybersecurity program here and is the director of the Graduate Program in Cybersecurity. And I'm really excited to be able to talk to him about his own experience and to learn a little bit more about his graduate journey to share that with you. Khalid, thanks so much for being here today. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:01:37]: Thank Chris for this opportunity. It's my pleasure to join your podcast. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:42]: Well, I'm really excited to have you here today, and I always start these interviews with an opportunity to go back in time. And I love turning the clock back a little bit to get a little bit better sense of who you were before versus where you are right now. And I know that you did your undergraduate work in Pakistan and you did your undergraduate, you did your master's work in Pakistan. You went off, you worked for a bit, and then you went and you decided to go even further. But I want to go back to when you were a student in Pakistan working on that undergraduate degree. You could have probably stopped at a bachelor's Degree you could have stopped there, but you decided to keep going. Bring me back to that point where you said to yourself, I want to keep going. I want to keep going and get that master's degree and then we'll talk about your doctorate degree. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:02:27]: Excellent. So Chris, I must give a credit to the society where I was raised. Actually there was a lot of value of higher education for me. There was a no choice except to continue. Let me put it straightforward. Particularly my parents would never ever allow me to go directly into the job. So they gave me option that, you know, if you think you can do a job and do a master together, certainly you should do it. But graduate, getting a graduation and going for higher education, particularly abroad is very important. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:02:59]: They encouraged me and I myself was highly motivated. I was lucky enough that I got acceptance in for my PhD from seven schools. But it all happens because of the motivation provided by my parents and my, my, my professor. So yeah, I never thought of stopping even when I started my bachelor. And I. One of the thing that I learned from one conversation that, that you know, some conversations make a lot of impact for your future career. I was planning to go to medical school and I was on the borderline. The total score was required to get into the medical school was 829 out of thousand and I was having eight. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:03:40]: But there was six candidate who were having 829. So I waited for six months to get into the medical school and I, I couldn't go into it. And I was sitting with all these big physicians and one of the person just asked me that you know what really you want to do if you don't go into medical school. I said I have opportunity in many fields, particularly veterinary medicine and so on. Is like then why you are not going? I said I want to do something interdisciplinary medical. I can do an interdisciplinary. I can bring math, I can bring statistic. I don't what other field I can do it. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:04:13]: And one of the person, he just says as a joke, he is a very famous New Jersey neurosurgeon now in New Jersey he said to me look at the flip side. Computing program also offer interdisciplinary. I said how? He says like someone has to develop a programs for medicine too. So why don't you if you're good in both and you know how to connect the dots, why don't you look at perspective of going into the computer science. So that was first my motivation that I will not do only bachelor in computer science. I will go for advanced studies as well. Because then I can probably Better leverage on my skills. I knew from my high school that I'm really good in interdisciplinary stuff. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:52]: Now. I know that you went, you got your master's degree and then you went off and you did work and you worked in industry for a little bit of time and at some point that itch came back. You wanted to keep, keep going. You and you decided that you wanted to continue your education and you ended up going and getting a ph. And I guess bring me to that point, because you're out in industry, you're doing great work, you're creating things, you're building things, you're doing things. And I'm guessing making an okay salary to live and being able to do that. But then you flip the script and you make a choice that you want to do something to expand your own knowledge and to push yourself to the next level. So talk to me about that. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:05:41]: Sure. So I must say that when I finished my master thesis, my salary was among 1% of the top candidate. If I could have just tried to settle down, this was a possibility. But that was never the goal. So even when I started my first year, I started writing research papers. I was trying to collaborate with the professors that, you know, I want to do this thing. And many more people were saying, you still just finish a master, you are not a PhD candidate, why you want to do a research. I was trying to explain my long term goals to them, that that's the reason I want to start research and my master. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:06:18]: I was the first person in the university who published paper in journal. Many people were publishing only on conference. I was first one who published it. And that also gave me a little bit of encouragement that I can do that. So I started applying. I got acceptance from six or seven schools. And then I was kind of confused that what should I do, how should I select, what school should I go to? So I talked to my dad and he asked me that why don't you talk to your uncles as well, because they are famous neurosurgeons and highly successful. I said, I will definitely ask everyone, but what are your thoughts? So he told me that, you know what, try to go somewhere where you can not learn your research. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:06:56]: You can learn something from society, but at the same time there should be peace of mind as well. I said, dar, you are bringing in these features or criteria that I never have thought. I was thinking I should pick the best of the best lab and where I can publish it, what is has to do with the culture and other things. He says, no, you learn a lot from your surroundings too. You are not learning only from the books. And said what do you mean by staying in a peaceful society? He said look, if you can't focus on something due to any reason, say the law and our situation is not good or there are some other social issues, you will not be able to very be very productive. I said that's interesting perspective. So I gave him a list. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:07:37]: He says what is your choice? I have respect for all the institute who gave me opportunity. I'm not mentioning the name of institutes but I'm mentioning the name of country. One of the top 1 kind of institute was from Singapore and than Thailand. I thought I told my dad these are my top schools and then there is two in United States. But they are not giving me a fully funded. They are giving me, you know like a 25% effort or something. I and that time I was unable to understand what does 25% and 30% effort mean. So I showed to my dad and he says like first two options are out. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:08:05]: I said why? Why they're out? They are the best school. Look at the QS ranking and it's like tell me all the options. I showed him the option that government of Japan is also offering me this scholarship and he says oh this looks really good. I said then there is a one university in Austri and one in Germany. And he said why you picked, you know, this institute from Singapore? I said I only look at the QS ranking, I don't know anything else. So he said that's not how you should making decision. First talk to the people instead of asking them that you know what school you should do, you should ask them that what criteria should be to select this and the reason why I'm bringing this one. I know many of the students are going to listen. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:08:44]: I hear same mistakes from other students. They pick pick the schools only based on the ranking without thinking that you know what kind of professor you are going to deal with, how successful he is, what kind of personality he has and more importantly where you are going, how peaceful the situation is or overall working environment and so on. So I developed this idea and you know, after talking to a lot of people I my dad particularly said you will learn a new language and new culture as well. So that's why I think you should go to the Japan and it's very peaceful country too. So this is how I ended up going to the Tokyo Institute of Technology. But the process also was a miracle for me. Of course we don't have a time I will share with you the story some other time. But yeah, this is how I ended up going into Turkey Institute and that was an amazing experience as of today, you know, I truly enjoy the bond that I have. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:09:33]: Probably you are aware that, you know, I brought first International industry project here, which we still are doing it, right? That is coming from one of the Japanese cybersecurity company. So. And still I enjoy a lot of connections, even my startup first client. By the way, my startup is supported by the University of Michigan. So our first client client is the government of Japan again. So the. The reason I'm sharing these with the thing is that sometime we should try to do risky things and try to do something that or people are not doing it because then you can reduce the competition that you will feel in rest of the world. So the Japanese connection has significantly impacted my research success both here as well as in Oakland University. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:16]: At every level of education you have to kind of figure out for yourself what it means to be successful. And you found success in the journey that you went on. You got the master's degree, you went and you got your PhD and you've gone on from there. And I guess as you look back at your master's degree at your PhD and the transitions that you had to go through, what did you have to do at both the master's and the doctorate? And it might be different for both. What did you have to do at both of those levels to be able to first set yourself up for success as you were starting in the program and then what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout the entire graduate degrees? Dr. Khalid Malik [00:10:59]: Great question, Chris. Again, if someone think, and sometimes my students think that you are very successful. And even I would say that my colleagues from Ann Arbor and Dearborn campus, you know, they also appreciate that having a startup in U of M fl, this is something that is unheard of. And these things I always tell people that I'm lucky enough, I'm blessed that I am surrounded by good mentor as well as my student. So I got a advice from one of my uncle who is a board of trustee in Henry Ford. He just said me one thing. I was in Japan and I was frustrated that, you know, I work up to 1am and I come back early morning around 8am this is how Japanese culture work. He says, remember one thing, why you are doing this? I said, I have set a lot of goals and I showed him a list that I want to publish this one. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:11:46]: He says, then why there is a stress if you have these goals, are you achieving these goals? I said, I believe so. I mean 80% of the milestone that I said I'm achieving it. He says, then why you are not happy? I said to him, I don't know why I'm not happy. He said, curiosity and hunger for doing a lot of thing is a great thing. But content is also very important. If you achieve something, celebrate it, remain content. If you fail on one or two occasions, you know, accept that and use that failure as an opportunity to learn something and try to, you know, do something big. So I always try to set a goal and then, you know, I try my best to remain content as well. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:12:28]: So that these two things have helped me a lot. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:30]: Did you find as you went into either of those degrees, did you find that you had to change the way in which you either learned change the way in which you approached your work that helped you to find success? Dr. Khalid Malik [00:12:44]: Absolutely. I mean you can imagine that going into some, some place where you cannot understand a single word. On day one, because I never studied Japanese before entering into the Japan, I take a six month of intensive Japanese classes to learn the Japanese. At same time I, I was lucky that professor allowed me to sit in the lab because I was curious more on doing research than language or want to do both in parallel. So it was first six months was very difficult. But what I learned from my Japanese friends, science particularly lab mate, that in this country you have to be super agile, Even you are 100 year old. I said what does that mean? I mean when we are above 70 or 80, how we can be agile. And this is, this is how this society work. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:13:27]: So one of the my lab mate who was in 70s by the way, he was doing PhD, he was in 17, he was the director of Japan Railway. So he gave me this advice that you need to be super agile. And I said to him what do you mean? He said look, this professor are also going to expect. He's asking you do your research, but he's asking you to put him in as a Hitachi project. So if you will be only focusing on one thing and not another and you are not agile, you will not be successful in this society. You will get your pit. So there were a lot of challenge, but again I was good listener so I tried to be super agile. I was working with Hitachi to learn it and that later on helped me to give a job in Panasonic. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:14:03]: Soon I finished my PhD and then I went for a consultancy as well for one or two years before moving here. So agility has helped me a lot. Definitely there were A lot of challenges, language barrier, culture barriers. But with the help of my colleagues and my, this trait of being a good listener and pushing myself, I was able to navigate those challenges. And even today I feel like doing a PhD in Japan was not a bad idea at all because I learned the language, I learned the culture, and I learned a lot of the good habits that even I have right now that those, those things help me to be more productive. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:41]: Now, as you think about that. And I know you now are a professor and you've been, you've gone, you've worked at other institutions and you're, you're a professor here at the University of Michigan Flint as well. And you work with graduate students that are on their own journeys. Talk to me about what you have to do as you are trying to help your students to find that success that you found in your own journey. And what are some of the things that you tell to your students as they're starting their graduate journey? Dr. Khalid Malik [00:15:11]: I focus on two things a lot. First of all, again, I have the biggest lab. Probably 80% of PhD students of U of M Flint belongs to my lab. Three postdocs, I'm having a very big lab. I told them two things and even when I bring them, I test these two. Number one, what about their fundamental, are they really good in the fundamental of the research that they want to do? And second thing is, are they truly interested in interdisciplinary research or not? Right. So for example, in our lab there are three very big projects. One of the project is we are applying the AI on the brain diseases. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:15:45]: So I tell students, if you are not willing to study the vascular system of the brain, you should not be participating in it. It's not that, you know, we are just doing this project for sake of getting something done. It's truly interdisciplinary. It has aspect of the mechanical engineering, it has aspect of the neurosurgery, it has aspect of the computer science and AI and it has the impact of aspect of the biology. My job is as a professor to lay down the surface that is very interdisciplinary in nature. So you guys can play for long time because you can look from very different angles and it will help you to publish sooner. But if you will look into vertically only, it's not truly interdisciplinary or multi disciplinary project, your chances of publication will be lower. And more importantly, yes, you will be maybe very successful or you will be expert in a certain field, but you will be very difficult to become a leader in industry even if you're going in academia. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:16:47]: I take my own example. I was Able to have a startup. Right? Right. Many people are unable to do that because you can then link, okay, how to apply this research into another discipline. So therefore, the pageant for interdisciplinary research is very important. And before that, you should have a strong fundamentals. If you are relying on the crutches of AI to do a strong research, I doubt that those students will be successful. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:13]: Now, I know that as you go into a new institution, as you're a new student, there definitely is some deference that you have towards your faculty members. It's a little scary for a new graduate student as they're entering into a new environment in trying to build those relationships with faculty members. You've been there, you've had to do that yourself as your own, as a student yourself. Now you are a faculty member. What would you say to new graduate students as they are trying to build those strong relationships with their faculty members? And how would you encourage them to move forward in building those? Dr. Khalid Malik [00:17:48]: I always advise students. Number one, if you are not getting response immediately from faculty member, don't give up, up. Number two, everyone appreciate a good research, no matter how busy they are. Many people think that having a startup, I have this big lab with three postdoc and you know, six PhD students on. But I listen to everyone. But there is a different way of listening. I don't have a time to sit with them. I say, let's walk together and have a discussion. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:18:14]: And those students I who are very passionate and they are willing to learn, even they are not very strong compared to many of the students who are working in lab and who are, for example, paid 50% effort or some of them 60%. I asked those students that come not only talk to me, talk to these postdoc and PhD students as well, be observer. So it's very important that you should not hesitate to speak with the people. You should show your passion. Yes. Sometime people like myself, like, you know, this person cannot do a lot of research. But we always give opportunities to those who have a passion of learning. So if students are shy, why and they are not expressing themselves that they want to learn, they will not be able to get opportunities. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:18:59]: So that's my first advice that I was successful. Believe me, I did half of my thesis going in escalator and elevators with the one professor who was very famous and he was not having a time. I always used to tell him, I will tell you what I did in a week when you are going from his company to 10th or 11th floor where there was institute for teaching as well. So getting someone's time. Expressing your opinion and passion is very important and all graduate students, particularly international students, should be doing this. That's a very important thing. Second thing I always tell students, look, we have a limited opportunities. Everyone wants to get a gsrs. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:19:40]: I tell students, prove yourself in a class. We don't have any litmus paper to say you will do best or not. So when we are assigning your project in the class, if you'll do best, believe me, I will approach you. You need not to come to me. If you are interested in going someone's lab, take the class of professor and do really well in the projects. So this is a second bit of the piece that I can give to my graduate student. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:02]: That's a great piece of advice and one that I continuously am trying to give to students as I do different webinars and have different opportunities to be able to talk to students. Because what I try to tell students is if you are not able to get a graduate assistantship right from the get go, when you're in class, your faculty members are going to have opportunities for you and they're going to ask people for their help, they're going to ask for volunteers and if your hand is the first one up, up every time, they're going to remember you. So when there are opportunities that do exist, who are they going to come to? And so that does bring up some different things in my mind in regards to as you think back to your own graduate experiences and you think back to the opportunities that you took advantage of, maybe they weren't the ones that you thought you were going to do. Talk to me a little bit about that and how doing just that by putting your hand up, by saying pick me, yes, I'm there. How did that open up other doors for you? Dr. Khalid Malik [00:20:59]: I will relate this with again one of my examples. So one of my experience in the Japan for one or two years I was struggling to understand the direction that my professor want me to pursue because I'm very hesitantly saying hopefully he is not going to listen to this interview. So I was having a firm opinion that my ideas are better than my professor ideas. And I was talking constantly to my colleagues and postdoc that look, what professor is saying to me me is not making much sense. I have much better ideas. And one of my colleague who's from China, he says then improve your ability to communicate. I said well, I can't speak a fluent Japanese, I don't know how to do it. He said that's not truly a barrier. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:21:41]: I said, then what do you mean by that? He's like, look, when you present it, you have a one guy who is half Japanese, half Australian, and he is a big supporter of your research. Why don't you present together? So communication is the key. It took me two years. It was the just the way of presenting to someone. That guy. I again is highly appreciative of that guy who is now very successful. He has a big company. Other day I saw he has more than 700 employees. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:22:10]: So he helped me a lot how to communicate to the people from the different cultures, right? And particularly my ideas were better understood by my professor. So to answer your questions knows it's very important that you know, you understand other people's point of view and try to communicate your thoughts in a way and work with those people rather than always thinking that you are superior to other people or you are inferior to other people. I took this opportunity, I was not shy or some of my other colleagues says, oh, when you will present with his name as Hama, you know, Professor Will Tungi. It's his idea. So in the start I said in my broken Japanese that professor, these are my ideas. I was trying to communicate it. But today you have to listen to both of us. And then similarly, when the opportunity came in to work in Panasonic, right. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:22:57]: I was initially hesitant. Is my Japanese skill enough to work in industry? I only know how to purchase a ticket, how to buy the food, and how to communicate with my colleagues in industry how is things are going to work. And I talked to a couple of other professors and I went to international office in my university and those people says, you can just give a shot. Why don't you go and give a presentation? So wherever I presented it, it initially it felt like very challenging. But you know, end of day, someone has to get to that position. We have to go with that mindset and we should keep on trying. And that's why I kept on trying. And even the society where, you know, I was not a native speaker, actually I'm not a native speaker. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:23:41]: Essentially my, my Japanese Skill was not JLPT level 3 or 4, which wasn't needed in industry. But I was successful because I was telling them what values I can bring in on, on the, on the project. So it' I agree with you. It's very essential that, you know, we should raise your hand and we should tell people what value we can bring in. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:24:01]: You've given a lot of pieces of advice today. You've talked about your own experience and as you think back to your Own graduate school experience. And you think about students that are thinking about graduate school, whether it be cybersecurity, business, health or some other area. What are some tips that you might offer them, these individuals that are thinking about graduate school that would help them find success soon sooner. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:24:22]: I think first of all we should look into how our societies are going to evolve in future. For example, these days AI is going to play a crucial role, right? So many people are afraid that you know what? Why should I go into the cyber security education? I'm giving a one example of cybersecurity. Same is true about computer science these days as well that when AIs particularly say the anthropic models are going to write all the code, how are we going to find the jobs? A lot of people have this question and this is a very valid question. Many top schools, including ucla, Ann Arbor campus, their number of application in computer science are decreasing mainly because of one concern. But the question that we should really have, particularly as a new graduate student is how are we going to work with AI? Rather than thinking that AI is going to replace us or we are going to replace AI, right? That's a fundamental. All of us, I mean when writing proposal lecture, we are interacting with AI. Students have to learn that know first of all what are the strength of AI and what are the limitations of AI? Because I see a lot of students who think AI is more powerful than the student themselves, right? That's not true. They have to understand where AI struggles too. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:25:33]: So that's a number one piece because I don't see a future of work without the AI. So even if you are going in any program, you must be learning little bit of AI and understand how you can leverage your current work, your current projects and future work with AI. That's number one a suggestion I have for a student. Number two is think what AI cannot do and interdisciplinary stuff AI is not good at so far I'll give example because if I'll not give example, those of your listener was saying they may not understand. There is a aspect called cyber physical systems where. Where for example we are riding AI for robot or a car and so on, right? Wherever there is an interaction of the hardware, human is needed. So those fields, highly interdisciplinary field where AI is going to play a partial role role. Look at those fields and they are tremendous. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:26:27]: Number third tip that I will tell students. Don't be afraid that AI will replace you. AI is going to take you to the next level. All of us are working up to midnight and getting up early morning. Our work is not going to finish. And if you ask me what you want to do in 2023, I will tell you there were tens of things that I couldn't accomplish it. So with the power of AI, we are going to achieve much bigger goals than what you know we aspire now. So instead of take accepting this as a challenge, take AI as your companion, but understand its weakness and try to involve yourself in interdisciplinary field where AI has lot of limitations. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:27:06]: This is a question that is coming again and again. Really. Students from all disciplines come to me and ask this question, so I thought I should answer you indirectly as well. Those who didn't interact with me, they will also learn about my opinion. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:18]: Well Dr. Malik, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for being here today, for sharing your own journey and I truly wish you all the best. Dr. Khalid Malik [00:27:25]: Thank you so much Chris for the opportunity. I'm looking forward to talk to some other times as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:30]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of masters and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad officemflint. Eduardo.
Balancing Life, Work, and Grad School: Success Tips from Bernard Drew
Are you considering graduate school, juggling work, family, and community commitments, or wondering how to make it all fit together? This week on the Victors in Grad School podcast, Dr. Christopher Lewis welcomes special guest Bernard Drew, business growth consultant at the Michigan Small Business Development Center, for an inspiring conversation about perseverance, prioritization, and the power of lifelong learning. Dr. Christopher Lewis sets the stage by reminding listeners that everyone's grad school journey looks different. Whether you're freshly accepted, deep in the trenches, or still deciding if it's the right move, each week's guest brings a unique perspective. This episode, however, is especially resonant for those returning to school after a significant break. 00:02:24 Bernard Drew shares his circuitous journey, going from a mechanical engineering undergrad, to working in business and ministry, to finally pursuing his MBA at Grand Valley State University nineteen years after his first degree. His turning point? A desire to serve more people, steward greater resources, and ensure he was as prepared as possible to give back to his community. A central theme discussed is the reality of balancing responsibilities. Bernard Drew is candid about the challenge: "If I'm going to add something else to my slate of priorities and responsibilities, it may imply I have to take something off the slate for a season." 00:07:46 From time-blocking Sundays for study sessions at Red Robin, to stepping back from some community commitments, he emphasizes the importance of clearly defining your "glass balls" – those priorities you cannot drop – and making peace with temporary sacrifices. The episode delivers actionable advice: Make the decision and the adjustments will follow; communicate boundaries and expectations with work and family; and don't underestimate the power of a strong support team. Even if you're returning to school after a long hiatus, leverage your lived experience and collaborate openly—you'll bring more value to the academic setting than you realize. Ready to be inspired? Hear Bernard Drew's full story and practical advice for succeeding in graduate school by listening to this episode of "Victors in Grad School." It's a must-hear for anyone who dreams of more, but wonders how to make it happen. Listen now and start writing your own victory story! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week we are on a journey together as you are thinking about graduate school and you're trying to figure out what is next for you. And every week I love being able to talk to you because it is a journey. And no matter if you are just starting, maybe you've applied, maybe you've gotten accepted, maybe you're in graduate school. Doesn't matter where you are in this journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:43]: But there are things that you can do right now to be able to prepare yourself, to be able to get yourself ready for success now. And that's why every week I bring you different people, different people with different experiences that can help you to be able to see graduate school from a little bit different perspective. And you can see graduate school through the experience that they had. This week. We've got another great guest. Bernard Drew is with us today. And Bernard is a business growth consultant at the Michigan Small Business Development Center. And Bernard has his own journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:20]: He started his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan and then went on and got an mba. And we'll be talking about that journey that he went on for himself. So I'm really excited to have him here. Bernard, thanks so much for being here today. Bernard Drew [00:01:32]: Well, good morning. It's an absolute pleasure to be part of this discussion with you, and I'm probably even more honored because I wish I would have known this existed before I started my own journey and glad that you're providing this kind of platform from others before they get started on theirs. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:45]: Well, as I said, I really am appreciative that you're being here now. What I want to do is I want to go back in time. And I said, you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, and after that, you. You went off. You got a lot of different experiences along the way that helped you kind of, I'm going to say, explore many different things in your career and careers per se. And at some point, at some point while you were working in the different jobs and the different careers that you've been in over the years, you came to a point where you made a decision that it was time to go back and it was time to continue your education. Bring me back to that point and what was going through Your head. Bernard Drew [00:02:24]: Well, you set that stage very well. I think life has taken some interesting journeys. Undergrad was mechanical engineering. Summer before my freshman year, I had an internship at GM and I made my own business cards that looked exactly like the business cards of my supervisor so I would fit. And I was unapologetic for saying I was going to be the CEO of GM by the time I was 35. In that level of boldness and courage. And then life evolves and you come to discover. I enjoyed engineering. Bernard Drew [00:02:51]: I did well with engineering, but I had a passion to want to really work in the daily lives of serving people. And so that post graduation journey evolved into a discovery that serving people dynamic in my life was working in ministry and working with people wherever they are in need of hope and a greater sense of identity and helping them to rediscover that for themselves, but also recognize while doing this, while serving people, the people that I'm serving, they're not my source, that there's other avenues for financial benefit, financial gain. And there became a desire to grow and discover business. And so for nearly 19 years after undergrad, that was the balance of my life was serving in ministry and operating in business with an emphasis in real estate. And when all said and done, as much as we had great momentum, I'm enjoying what we're doing. It was the revelation that there's more people that I want to be able to serve. There's greater impact I'd like to be able to make in the community. There are some programs that I would like to see supported and facilitated to better the lives of people. Bernard Drew [00:03:53]: And if given the opportunity to steward hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars of resources to support some community endeavors, last thing I would want is to be at the cusp of an opportunity to serve people in that capacity and for whatever reason be deemed ill prepared or ill equipped to properly steward those kind of funds at the detriment of the people that deserve to have those funds and those resources and programs allocated to them. And that's what prompted me to say, you know what? Here's an opportunity. Let me go ahead and get this mba. That's part of what sparked and prompted that course of direction 19 years after undergrad. It was a desire to want to be properly steward resources and better impact the lives of people. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:31]: And I know that you chose to attend Grand Valley State university for your MBA and there are many MBAs all over the state of Michigan, all over the country and the world. So talk to me about that education journey for yourself and what Was it ultimately that made you decide to select Grand Valley when you identified that as your final choice? Bernard Drew [00:04:54]: I think it's a profound question with an extraordinarily simple answer called money. I think that to be concise, I enjoyed my journey providing consulting services independently for small businesses and working in the real estate space, commercial real estate space, for years. And in the course of that journey, I discovered that the SBDC existed, began working with them closely, so closely that they invited me to consult with them as a contractor. And that evolved into an opportunity to work full time, time for our state hub at Grand Valley State, and just call it what it is. Part of the compensation plan is a tuition benefit. And so when all was said and done, that was the driving force that made that decision making pretty simple. And I'm sure like most people, there's an aspiration to better their lives. There's an aspiration to improve their capacity to bless their families and those that they serve and elevate themselves professionally. Bernard Drew [00:05:47]: But when all said and done, I'm sure everyone has to at some point stop and evaluate what is the financial investment required to take this academic step and what is my plan for being able to generate a return on that investment, pay it back off and continue to flourish. That definitely was the nail got hit on the head that made that work for me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:06]: Now, you already mentioned that it was 19 years from the time that you were in your undergrad to the time that you went into graduate school. And that's a lot of time to be able to get out of the student mode, we'll say, and being in that thought process, that thought zone of what it means to be a student, but saying that I know that you were successful in going through your graduate degree, you got the mba, you've gone on from there, so you found success in that graduate school journey for yourself. So I guess as you think back to entering into graduate school, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do as you got into graduate school and went through graduate school to maintain that success throughout the entire graduate school journey? Bernard Drew [00:06:54]: I think that's a great question. And again, it's one of those. I wish I would have had more insight before I started at that point of making the decision. It was just that. Just make the decision and go for it, Bernard. Don't overthink it. Don't overanalyze, don't over critique the unknown. The engineer in me sometimes wants to look at all the variables all the time and make sure everything Lines up and life doesn't just line up perfectly. Bernard Drew [00:07:15]: It was just a decision. And as the pieces began to fall into place and it was a reality that this was going to take place, there was a need to rapidly begin to assess how do I balanced life? Now that I have integrated this new commitment of graduate school, and having been out of an academic environment for 19 years, for what I thought it was going to take to make room and time, I didn't nearly have the right perspective to understand how much time really was going to need to be allocated. And that was probably the single greatest challenge during and throughout the program was finding a way to, quote, unquote, find some balance. Because I've got a wife, two kids, community commitments, business commitment, work commitment. It was a lot. And so the biggest factor is if I'm going to add something else to my slate of priorities and responsibilities, it may imply that I have to take something off the slate for a season. And that was a very, very, very hard thing to embrace, let alone implement. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:18]: Now, I know that you have completed your degree, you went off, you continued, you're still doing business growth consultation and have that skill base, that knowledge base under your belt right now. How do you see yourself utilizing what you learned in your MBA on a daily basis? Bernard Drew [00:08:35]: No, that's great. As I prep for this, I'll also continue to spin off from that last question. I will say that journey navigating undergraduate school, and I just share this with anyone that's there. It takes time and giving yourself the space to reevaluate your own priorities so that you can confidently know what you're saying yes to and confidently know what you're saying no to is so incredibly important. And some of it you won't know until you get into it. But for the most part, I would highly encourage some reflective time to sit down and maybe jot down. These are the things that I prioritize and recognize which things. Yeah, I've heard this story. Bernard Drew [00:09:12]: Somebody talked about if you're juggling in life and some of the balls are tennis balls, some are baseballs, but some are glass balls, you can drop a tennis ball, it's resilient, and you're juggling. You can drop a baseball and it'll rebound, it's resilient. But if you drop that glass ball, it breaks. And you've got to clearly define what are the unbreakable things, the unshakable things, the things that I cannot compromise as I have to pick and choose where my time is going to go. And so figuring out how to clearly define that and be okay if some of those other things fall and be okay with it and know that that was just the choice that you made. And so family, there was some sacrifice of time with family, but I didn't want that to be one of the glass balls that I allowed to break. That was something that had to be maintained. Certain commitments with work obviously had to be sustained. Bernard Drew [00:09:55]: But I also say I had some conversations with my supervisor who was very well aware before I got into the process that there was a level understanding, accommodating if I couldn't make certain meetings or couldn't make certain evening events. Because I was committed to school, they understood and that helped to set the expectation. There were certain things again serving in community and ministry. I had to withdraw from a couple of boards I was on because I did not have the capacity during that time frame to serve them well and provide adequate time and energy towards my studies. And there were just some things that had to be dropped. But then at the appointed time I could choose if it was right after the program to go and pick some of those balls back up. And so I just want to encourage individuals that are listening and considering. It'd be worth your time to evaluate what's the priority, what are the things that you can compromise, the things that you can't and be okay that certain things are going to fall, but it's temporary, didn't have to be permanent and you'll be more confident when you've made that decision on purpose, what those things are. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:49]: So you just talked about the fact that you had to kind of look at those priorities and you had to try to figure out how to balance those. Talk to me about what you ended up doing to be able to balance balance school, work, family and other responsibilities that you had to be able to maintain the success that you wanted in your graduate school journey. Bernard Drew [00:11:08]: I would say one of the keys was time blocking, where I would just dedicate block off time for what is worth. Family knew on Sundays after church, pretty much one o' clock and afterward that they probably weren't going to see me. Typically I had a routine on Sundays. I actually would go to Red Robin. They'd have football on the TV and I would snap in the gear of studying and reading from Red Robin. I'd probably be there for an hour and a half, catching a half of a football game, eating and reviewing my notes, reviewing the game plan for what needed to be studied. I would have a team meeting probably about 8 o' clock that night with folks who were on within my cohort, that we had agreed to work together on certain projects together, and that in between time was a lot of my diligent prep time. Usually we had assignments that had to be submitted by 11:59pm on Sunday night. Bernard Drew [00:11:56]: So Sunday was kind of like the crescendo. And that had to be time blocked, as well as some preliminary time blocks throughout the week that, hey, from this time to this time, I'm preparing for this class. From this time to this time, I'm preparing for that class. And ideally those time blocks at least gave me, I would say 80% of the time necessary, but then I'd have to squeeze in a lot of other time elsewhere. But that was one of the key pieces, blocking out that time, clear communication with those around me so that they would know that they're not being haphazardly left alone, but that this was the dedicated time and conversely, trying to create dedicated time blocks to spend with them as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:36]: And as you look back at your graduate education and you think about what you had to do, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Bernard Drew [00:12:48]: I think number one is definitely just make the decision. I don't know that there is a perfect time and a season for it. Make the decision. And once it's made, then it almost forces you to create the time blocking it almost forces you to do the prioritization in life. So just know that, get the application submitted and just get the process started. Even regards to finding capital, I'm over here considering starting this journey over again with the DBA program over at U of M Flint. And there's a reality that you know what need to align some game plans for the capital and align some plans for where the resource is going to come from and just take the next step. And I think that that's a big part of it. Bernard Drew [00:13:24]: I would also encourage heavily one of the big lessons learned. I hadn't been in school in so long and when I did finish my undergrad, I was so glad to be finished. I kind of had an attitude like, get me out of here. I don't want to see you guys again. Mission accomplice, let's move on in life. But I'll just say it was a joy to discover that because I was in a program that was so specific to something, I had a passion, I enjoyed my classwork. I think the life and lived experience provided a lot of opportunity for the academic perspective to have the framework to be relevant based on lived experience. In a way that it made my classes that much more practical for me to embrace and understand. Bernard Drew [00:14:03]: So if you've been out for a while, see that as an asset, not a liability. I was sitting in class with some classmates who were pretty much my daughter's age. I had a daughter who was in her undergraduate program at the same time that I was in my graduate program. And it's great to recognize and appreciate what each person brings to the table. Don't operate in isolation. Build a team, be collaborative, and learn to respect that more can be accomplished when working together. I think that was one of the greatest virtues when we really hit our stride in the program was when we had a solid team that we were working with and could confidently rely on certain people to carry certain legs of the race, respective assignments each week and projects. And that became more of a virtue over time. Bernard Drew [00:14:48]: And if you're not accustomed to that, that's something I would encourage you to prepare your heart, your mind, even just your way of doing things for. Prepare yourself to work effectively and purposely with other people. It'll make the journey that much more impactful. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:00]: Well, Bernard, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. Thank you for all that you shared about the experiences that you've had. And I know that you, as you said, you're considering further education. So education never stops and you continue have to look for new ways to be able to challenge yourself. But I really appreciate you being here today and I wish you all the best. Bernard Drew [00:15:19]: I greatly appreciate it. I'm grateful that you have this platform. And again, I just appreciate the encouragement, the practical perspective that it can give to those who are considering or are in their journey, and hope there's some inspiration that allows that journey to be all the more simpler. So thank you very much. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:35]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, Visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad officemflint.edu.
Balancing Career, Family, and an MBA: Lessons from Keith Poniers
Are you contemplating a return to graduate school, or perhaps already in the thick of balancing higher education with work and family commitments? The latest episode of Victors in Grad School dives into the inspiring journey of Keith Poniers, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Hurley Medical Center, as he recounts what it truly takes to thrive in graduate school after years away from academia. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint, this episode offers an honest, firsthand account of re-entering higher education more than two decades after earning an undergraduate degree. Keith Poniers reflects that it had been 26 years since he stepped into a classroom, and details how evolving career ambitions and executive opportunities motivated him to pursue an MBA (02:25). He candidly discusses the challenge of shaking off "school mode" and stepping into a new academic environment surrounded by both younger students and peers from diverse backgrounds (05:03). A primary theme throughout the episode is the importance of resilience and adaptability. Keith Poniers openly shares the nerves that came with his first orientation, the adjustment to working alongside younger classmates, and the rapid pivot to online learning brought about by the pandemic (09:04). He credits supportive professors and a strong personal support system—including his wife—for helping him maintain balance and motivation during challenging times (07:28). Sacrificing leisure activities, managing work stress, and dedicating ample time to study were keys to his success, alongside the drive to meet his own high standards (08:37). Listeners will find actionable advice woven throughout, especially for professionals considering graduate school. Keith Poniers emphasizes finding a program that fits your personal circumstances, preparing for a demanding time commitment, and being ready for collaborative, group-based learning environments (13:15). The episode is rich in reminders about the personal and professional rewards of graduate education, the value of maintaining motivation, and the necessity of adapting to new formats like online learning. If you're seeking relatable insights and practical encouragement on the road to an advanced degree, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in to hear Keith Poniers and Dr. Christopher Lewis explore the realities of balancing life, career, and education—proving that it's never too late to become a victor in grad school. Ready to take the next step? Listen to the full episode and let their stories inspire your graduate journey! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week we are on a journey together. This is a great opportunity for us to be able to take a look at this journey that you've decided to explore or maybe that you're already on. Graduate school is definitely a journey. And no matter if you're just starting off, you're just starting to think about things, maybe you have applied, maybe you've been accepted, maybe you're in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:44]: No matter where you are, this is a journey and it's leading you down that. That proverbial path toward the light at the end of the tunnel. And every week, I love to be able to talk to you, to work with you, to help you, to provide you with some tools for your toolbox, to give you some sense of how can you find success in this journey that you're on. That's why every week, I truly enjoy being able to introduce you to new people with different experiences that can share the graduate journey that they went on. With you this week, we got another great guest. Keith Ponyers is with us today. And Keith is the vice president and chief financial officer at Hurley Medical center. And I am really excited to be able to have him here to talk to you about his own journey in education and to welcome him to the show. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:31]: Keith, thank you so much for being here today. Keith Poniers [00:01:33]: Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate the time and look forward to sharing my experience. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:38]: Well, I'm really excited to have you here, and I always love to start these conversations with a turn back in time. So I know that you did your undergraduate work at Indiana University and you went through that experience, you got your bachelor's degree in accounting, and then you went off, you went off, you worked, and you got a lot of different experiences in different types of companies in you. At some point along the way, I'm going to say, quite a ways down the path, you made a decision to go back to school. Take me back to that point in time. And what made you decide that that was the time, that was the time that you wanted to start that graduate education journey for yourself? Keith Poniers [00:02:25]: Sure. So as you said, it was 26 years between the time I left. Graduated from Indiana way back in 93 until, you know, stepping foot on U of M. Flint's campus in the fall of 2019. What got me to that point over those 26 years in my various jobs, I never thought there was a need for an MBA through the different companies that I worked for. It really wasn't required, that kind of thing. But I got an opportunity to come work at Hurley here in Flint. And I'm a Genesee county born and raised. Keith Poniers [00:03:03]: Other than my four years at Indiana University, I've either lived or worked here in Genesee County. So coming to work at Hurley was a great opportunity for me. Really love the Flint community and like I said, it's always been a part of my life. But I had an opportunity to come here at Hurley as working in the finance department, and then after a couple of years had another opportunity here at Hurley, and the current CFO was retiring. And they approached me of saying, if you're interested in, you know, stepping up into that role, a master's, an MBA would really go a long way to being you, to become a serious candidate. Nothing's ever guaranteed. But again, if you want that opportunity, certain things to get to that executive level, you do need a master's or B, a cpa, those kind of things. So that got me thinking, okay, where am I at? I was comfortable in my life, wife, daughter, grandkids. Keith Poniers [00:03:56]: But if I wanted to take that next step in my life and further my career, it was something that needed to be done. So I did some research. Different education opportunities. There's obviously there were online MBAs that you could get. I looked at different ones around the state. But I was attracted to U of M Flint 1, being here right down the road from where I was currently working, great, you know, reputation. So that kind of was the avenue that led me to apply to U of M Flint and their MBA program. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:27]: Now you just said that it was about 26 years between when you last left education to when you came back and you kind of get out of the mode of being in school mode, I'm going to say. So talk to me about that transition for yourself. Everybody goes through those transitions. And you had transitioned out of higher ed quite a ways in the past, and then you came back after many years in working. So what did you have to do for yourself to be able to transition back into school and find success as you transitioned in? And what did you have to do as you were going through that graduate education to be able to maintain that success? Keith Poniers [00:05:03]: It was a huge transition for me. Again, like you said, 26 years is a long time. I still to this day, you know, all these years later, remember going to the orientation, you know, at the School of Management building down the street here, and being very nervous. I'm walking into a room full of people. They're professional people mostly. There are some that just continue right from undergrad into the MBA program. But I was for sure one of the older people in that room having that gap. So it was a challenge to become comfortable in that setting. Keith Poniers [00:05:35]: You start working with, meeting people a lot younger than you in all different professions. So definitely a challenge. I think I just needed to reset my mind that, okay, this is a new chapter of my life. I drew back on some of those experiences from Indiana. When I went to Indiana, I was the only one from my school to go there. So it was a new experience. So it was kind of like deja vu all over again. Stepping into a new world, not knowing anyone, you know, just like I did when I was a freshman at that point, 30 years ago, from when I started as a freshman at Indiana, to quote, being a freshman in the new world of education, too, that was the other thing that was. Keith Poniers [00:06:15]: It was when I went to Indiana, I took an electric typewriter with me. You know, it was, now I've come into college with a high tech laptop. So just kind of, like I said, just going back and understanding I can be successful in this new world of education. And it really took, you know, that first couple classes to really become comfortable and say, okay, look, I can fit in. And the professors there were great. My first class was in person with Dr. Lawrence, negotiation class. He made us all feel really comfortable. Keith Poniers [00:06:47]: He was still, I would say, that's my favorite class of my mba. I draw on the experiences from that class and the lessons learned from Dr. Lawrence in the negotiation. I still have books from his class and a few others on my bookshelf behind me. But it really, again, the professors made it really comfortable for myself, being a little older, to fit in with the younger crowd and worked well with each other there. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:12]: Now you were working full time while you were going through school, so you had to do some balancing along the way. Talk to me about balance and how were you able to find that balance for yourself as you were trying to wear the many hats that you had to wear while you were going through a graduate program. Keith Poniers [00:07:28]: Sure. I give a lot of credit to my wife. She was very supportive. The job at that point, I was controller at Hurley, you know, working my way, hopefully being to be considered for the. The CFO role. So. But it was a very challenging job, stressful as well. So Then you throw college classes on top of it and all the time commitments. Keith Poniers [00:07:48]: So again, like I said, a lot of thanks, kudos to my wife for allowing me to kind of step back from our marriage. And you have to have that kind of give and take with whoever you're living with, your partnering with, whoever that they understand and they are supportive because it is an impact on your life. I kind of had to give up some of my other extracurricular activities I love to golf. I had to cut back and golf, fantasy football, fantasy baseball, those other things I had to scale back a little bit on. But ultimately you understand that there's a goal while you are doing this. And so you sacrifice a little bit to reach that goal. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:23]: You do have to do some of that. You do have to sacrifice at times. And you have to find ways to keep yourself motivated because it can be challenging along the way. How did you stay motivated through challenging semesters or coursework? Keith Poniers [00:08:37]: I hold myself to a very high standard. So for me, the motivation was doing the best I can, getting the best grade throughout. Like, I started in the fall of 2019. So my second semester was 2020, which is obviously Covid hit. So that was its own challenge in itself. Stepping back in the classroom after 26 years, thinking everything was going to be in person, and then all of a sudden Covid hits and the whole world changed. And so that really continued to make me be focused on, okay, I got to pay attention because now everything is online. It was kind of a different world that I'm used to in person meetings, talking face to face with people. Keith Poniers [00:09:20]: Now everything flipped to virtual meetings, virtual classes. That was a whole new learning experience in itself. But again, my drive to be successful, and I knew I needed to be successful if I wanted to reach the ultimate goal of being considered for a higher executive level here at the hospital, that was really important to me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:41]: Now, you said you, it sounded like you looked at only MBA programs because that was the path that you were looking at. And as you look back now, it's been a couple of years since you got that degree. And you think back now to the things that you're still pulling from. If you had to do it all over again, would you choose the same program or path? Why or why not? Keith Poniers [00:09:59]: I would absolutely choose the same program. Again, the convenience of being local here in the community was a big selling point to me. Again, at that point, I thought I would be more successful with an in person type of learning because that's what I was used to way back in the day. Obviously didn't know I was going to completely flip to an online class. I only had the first semester and then about two or three months of the second semester was actual in person before going to online. So in hindsight, knowing how more convenient online classes is, I may have considered something a little different. But again, that was kind of, that was what I was used to, so that's why I chose it. But even now, understanding, you know, the online presence, I think, you know, U of M. Keith Poniers [00:10:46]: Flint did a great job making that transition. It was quick, seamless, really. No issues with the technology or anything like that. So I think knowing the university has those resources available that they can quickly, you know, pivot as well, they made it very easy transition as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:04]: And I know earlier you mentioned Dr. Lawrence's class, but. And you think, as you think about the courses that you went through, how did graduate school change the way you think or approach problems? Keith Poniers [00:11:14]: I mean, there were a handful of classes that I continue to draw back on. Organizational behavior was one. Again, one of my first classes. But as I stepped into more leadership roles throughout my career, being able to read, people understand you can't treat everyone the same. Everyone is different. You know, those, those kind of lessons were and I felt like repeated in a lot of the classes. But sometimes you just need that drip, drip, drip to. To hear message over and over again. Keith Poniers [00:11:43]: You know, you have to be open. You have to be, you know, look at things differently through different lenses, whether it's just dealing with people or other ideas kind of thing. So that's something I continue to draw on throughout my career since I've graduated as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:58]: What's something that you wish that someone had told you before you started graduate school? Keith Poniers [00:12:02]: It required a little more time commitment than I expected. Again, I thank my wife and my family for being supportive. And you think, okay, I got all these life experiences, I should be able to handle it. But I'm also one that I like to be prepared. So I probably spent more time studying, reading, making sure, you know, I did everything on the syllabus so I could be successful. So again, just be prepared to spend and dedicate that time necessary if you want to be successful. You have to put in the time. So my one negative of the whole thing at the whole experience was the one A minus. Keith Poniers [00:12:40]: I got in one class that cost me a 4.0 GPA. And I think I go back to I prob. Probably didn't spend enough time preparing for that one exam in that class that I didn't do as well as I should have been. And I still kind of kick myself for not getting that perfect 4.0 class or GPA throughout my two years there. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:59]: Now, as you think back to your graduate education and you think of others that are thinking about going to graduate school, whether it be in business or the health field or something else, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Keith Poniers [00:13:15]: I think you got to find the right environment for you to be successful again. Understand that there will be impact to your personal life, especially if you're working. If you're going to be working and doing this, gotta make sure your job understands okay. You know, you're gonna have some other commitments you may have to take some time off for. For certain things that just getting your mind right, that's going to impact your current life and your work life balance. You need to be prepared to adjust and pivot accordingly because if you want to be, you have to dedicate the time to it. You can't just skirt by. Sometimes I think people in high school, they can, okay, you just got to do the work. Keith Poniers [00:13:57]: You can get by through in high school. When you get to college, you have to step up a little more. I think the MBA program, at least from my experience, and again I'm comparing to my undergrad a long time ago, but there was a lot more interaction, group work, those kind of things which I found really, I appreciated that back in my day, you know, we didn't do as many group projects even at Indiana, but in this program, program every class had group work. You're doing online comments, chats, working on projects. So it goes back to if you're going to be successful, you have to be willing to work with other people. You have to be tolerant to that. Not everyone is going to have the same work ethic as you. So you have to accept that they might just be along for the ride while you're striving to further your career. Keith Poniers [00:14:45]: You have to either one, call them out for that. Don't be bashful if somebody's not putting in the work. You got to call them out and make sure, hey, migrate on what you do as well on those group projects. That's another thing where I would encourage, don't be afraid to step up and say something as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:01]: Well, Keith, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today and I truly wish you all the best. Keith Poniers [00:15:06]: Thank you very much. I appreciate the time. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:08]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad officemflint. Eduardo.
How to Share Obstacles You've Overcome in Your Personal Statement (Without Sounding Clichéd)
There's a question I hear often from graduate applicants—and it usually comes with a long pause and a little uncertainty: "Should I talk about the obstacles I've overcome in my personal statement?" And then the follow-up question: "What if it sounds… cliché?" If you're asking that, I want you to know: you're already thinking like a strong writer. Because the truth is, many applicants do write about challenges in ways that feel generic or overly dramatic. And that can make an essay blur into the background—especially when admissions reviewers are reading dozens (or hundreds) of statements. But here's the good news: You can absolutely write about obstacles you've overcome in a way that feels authentic, powerful, and professional. In fact, when done well, it often becomes the most compelling part of the essay—not because it's dramatic, but because it shows the real qualities graduate programs value: resilience self-awareness maturity problem-solving growth So today, I'll show you how to present challenges you've faced without sounding cliché, without oversharing, and without turning your personal statement into a "sad story." Instead, you'll learn how to turn obstacles into narrative strength—while still clearly showing you're ready for graduate school. First: Yes, you can talk about obstacles (and sometimes you should) Let's begin by addressing the concern directly: You are allowed to talk about obstacles in a graduate school personal statement. Graduate programs understand that people don't arrive at graduate school with perfectly smooth paths. In fact, sometimes a challenge is what shapes a person into the kind of student and professional who thrives in graduate-level work. But there is one key principle to keep in mind: Your obstacle should not be the centerpiece. Your growth should be. This is where many essays go off track. Why some "obstacle essays" feel clichéd Let's talk honestly about what makes a challenge story land poorly. Obstacle stories often become clichés when they: rely on generic phrases focus too much on pain without reflection jump to a "happy ending" without showing the process make the reader do the work of connecting the dots sound like an inspirational movie trailer instead of a real person You've probably seen phrases like: "I learned that everything happens for a reason." "This challenge made me stronger than ever." "I never gave up on my dreams." "Through hard work and determination, I overcame…" None of these are inherently wrong—they're just vague. They don't show anything specific about you. Graduate programs don't need a motivational quote. They need clarity. They want to understand: what happened what you did what you learned how it changed you how it prepared you for graduate study The most important shift: Move from drama to meaning If you want to avoid clichés, here is the simplest and most powerful advice I can give: Don't write your obstacle story like a headline. Write it like a reflection. Instead of making the reader think: "Wow, that sounds hard." You want the reader to think: "This person learned something important, responded with maturity, and is ready for the next level." The heart of your obstacle story isn't the obstacle. It's the decisions you made and the growth you gained. What graduate programs want to see in an obstacle story When admissions reviewers read about a challenge, they're usually looking for signs of: coping and resilience responsibility and ownership problem-solving ability to seek help self-awareness and reflection forward movement readiness, not fragility This is important: The goal is not to convince them you've suffered. The goal is to show them you can succeed, even when life is difficult. The best structure to use: Situation, Action, Growth, Connection This framework is the simplest way to write about obstacles without sounding cliché. I call it: Situation Action Growth Connection Here's what that looks like. Situation Briefly describe what happened, with just enough context to understand the challenge. Keep this section short. You are not writing a memoir. Action What did you do in response? This is the most overlooked part of obstacle essays. Your response is what shows maturity. Growth What did you learn? Not a generic lesson—something specific that shows insight. Connection How does this connect to your goals and graduate readiness? This brings it back to admissions. What to include (and what to leave out) Let's make this practical. Include brief, relevant context your response and choices how you adapted skills you developed how it influenced your direction growth you can name clearly forward-facing mindset Leave out or minimize overly detailed personal information blame toward others long emotional descriptions medical or mental health specifics, unless necessary and handled carefully unresolved hardship presented as ongoing crisis anything that makes the program wonder if graduate study could overwhelm you You don't need to share everything to be authentic. You need to share what supports the narrative of readiness. How to avoid clichés: 6 strategies that work Here are some concrete ways to keep your writing fresh, real, and compelling. 1) Use specific details, not generic feelings Instead of "it was hard," explain what "hard" meant in real life. Example: managing full-time work while caring for a family member navigating housing instability during an academic term switching majors after realizing the first path wasn't aligned being the first in your family to understand the college system Specificity makes your story feel real—not cliché. 2) Focus on the process, not the moral Avoid ending with "I learned perseverance." Instead, show what perseverance looked like. Example: "I created a weekly schedule and met with my academic advisor twice a month to ensure I stayed on track." That's not cliché. That's concrete. 3) Avoid overly dramatic language You don't need words like: devastating shattered life-changing in every way darkest moment Sometimes those words are true, but they can read as exaggerated in an admissions context. Let the facts and reflection create the impact. 4) Show agency This is huge. Even if the obstacle was not your fault, your essay should highlight what you did next. Agency sounds like: "I sought support…" "I adjusted my approach…" "I learned how to…" "I created a plan to…" 5) Include one insight that's uniquely yours This is the moment where you sound like a real person, not an essay template. It might be: a realization a new perspective a shift in your values an understanding about your field Example: "That experience taught me that support systems aren't optional—they're essential. That insight is one reason I'm pursuing graduate study in counseling." 6) Bring it back to graduate readiness This is the "professional landing." Tell the reader why this experience prepares you for graduate-level work. Examples: stronger time management improved communication better boundary setting comfort asking for help and using resources ability to persist and problem-solve clearer purpose and direction Example paragraph: obstacle story without clichés Here's an example that follows the framework and stays professional: "During my junior year, I experienced a major disruption in my family responsibilities that required me to work increased hours while also supporting younger siblings at home. My academic performance was impacted during that semester, but it also forced me to develop skills I had not needed before. I created a structured weekly schedule, met regularly with instructors to stay aligned with expectations, and learned how to communicate early when challenges arose. Over time, I regained academic momentum and became more disciplined, organized, and intentional about how I used my time. That experience strengthened my confidence in my ability to manage demanding workloads—skills I know will be essential in graduate study." Notice what this does well: it gives context, but doesn't overshare it focuses on action it shows learning it ends with readiness That's the goal. What if your obstacle is connected to low grades or gaps? This is a common situation, and it can actually be a powerful narrative—if handled well. Here's how to do it: briefly acknowledge it explain context without excuses explain what changed point to evidence of improvement emphasize readiness now Graduate programs respect honesty and growth. They struggle with avoidance or blaming. Quick checklist before you submit Use this to test whether your obstacle story is helping your application. Is the obstacle described briefly, without overwhelming detail? Does the essay focus more on growth than hardship? Do I show what I did, not just what I felt? Is my reflection specific and meaningful? Does this story support my readiness for graduate study? Does my tone feel professional, grounded, and hopeful? If yes, you're in a great place. Final encouragement I'll end with this: Your obstacles do not disqualify you from graduate school. In many cases, they help explain the strength you bring into it. But the strongest personal statements do not ask the admissions committee to "feel sorry" for the applicant. They show something far more compelling: A person who has faced challenges, responded with purpose, learned with maturity, and is ready for what's next. And if you can tell that story with clarity and authenticity? You won't sound cliché. You'll sound real.
Can Your Letters of Recommendation Come From Outside of Academia?
If you're applying to graduate school, you've probably reached the part of the application that feels surprisingly stressful: Letters of recommendation. Not because you don't know anyone—most applicants do. But because the requirements often sound like they were written for one very specific kind of student: someone who graduated recently someone who still has professors who remember them someone currently working in an academic environment someone who has research experience and faculty mentors And if your path looks different than that—if you've been working full-time, changed careers, raised a family, served in the military, or simply graduated a while ago—you might be wondering: "Can my letters of recommendation come from outside of academia?" In other words: Can my supervisor write one? What about a colleague? A nonprofit director I volunteered with? A clinical supervisor? A mentor in my profession? If you've asked these questions, you're thinking smartly—and you're not alone. So today, I'm going to answer this clearly and thoroughly, from the perspective of someone who works in graduate admissions and supports applicants every day. By the end, you'll know: when non-academic letters are acceptable (and even preferred) who makes the strongest recommender outside academia when you should prioritize academic references how to choose recommenders strategically and how to request letters that actually help your application Let's jump in. The short answer: Yes—often they can In many cases, yes. Graduate programs understand that applicants come from diverse paths, and many strong graduate students are: professionals returning to school career changers adult learners military-connected students first-generation students parents or caregivers applicants who have been away from academia for several years And those applicants may not have recent professors who can write meaningful, detailed letters. Here's the important detail, though: The best recommendation letters are not about where the recommender works. They are about what the recommender can say about you. A strong letter—academic or professional—does the same job: it shows evidence of your readiness it highlights strengths that match graduate-level expectations it provides examples of how you work, learn, and contribute Why graduate programs ask for recommendation letters It helps to understand what these letters are supposed to accomplish. Graduate programs use letters of recommendation to answer questions like: Can this applicant succeed in graduate-level work? Are they dependable and responsible? Can they write, think, communicate, and problem-solve at a high level? Do they have the maturity for advanced study? Will they contribute positively to the program community? A good letter gives the committee a perspective they can't get from: grades resumes personal statements or test scores Recommendation letters are third-party credibility. They confirm that your application isn't just well-written—it's true. When letters from outside academia are absolutely appropriate Many graduate programs accept professional references without hesitation, especially when the applicant has been out of school for a while. Professional letters are often ideal if: you graduated more than 3 to 5 years ago you're applying to a professional or practice-based program you've gained substantial work experience in a relevant field your work responsibilities demonstrate advanced skills you have supervisors who can speak to your performance Examples of programs where professional letters are often strong: MBA and business programs education leadership programs social work counseling and clinical programs public health nursing and healthcare programs nonprofit management information technology, cybersecurity, and applied STEM fields MPA and public administration For these programs, real-world performance matters—and professional references can be incredibly persuasive. When academic letters are strongly preferred Now, there are some circumstances where academic letters are still the best choice. Programs often prefer academic references when: you are applying to a research-heavy graduate program you are applying to a PhD or thesis-based master's program the program requires evidence of academic writing and research skill you are applying directly from undergrad or have recent coursework the program explicitly states faculty references are required In these cases, the program wants letters that can specifically address: academic writing intellectual curiosity research potential critical thinking classroom contribution scholarly habits Academic letters can be hard to replace when the program is evaluating research readiness. The real key: choose recommenders who can provide specific examples Here's something I tell applicants all the time: A letter from a famous person who barely knows you is weak. A letter from a direct supervisor who truly knows your work is strong. Admissions committees care about detail. Strong letters include: how long the person has known you what role they worked with you in specific examples of your performance specific strengths connected to graduate work clear recommendation language Weak letters are vague and generic, filled with phrases like: "hard-working" "nice" "great attitude" "good communicator" Those aren't bad traits—but they don't prove readiness for graduate-level success. Who should I ask for a letter if I'm using non-academic references? Here are the best choices outside academia: direct supervisor or manager clinical supervisor or preceptor department lead who has evaluated your work project leader you reported to nonprofit executive you worked closely with internship supervisor mentor who oversaw your professional development When possible, choose someone who can speak to: how you learn how you handle complex tasks how you communicate professionally how you lead or collaborate how you manage responsibility Those are graduate success indicators. Who to avoid asking (if possible) Sometimes applicants choose recommenders based on title rather than content. Try to avoid: family friends or personal acquaintances religious leaders who only know you socially elected officials who met you once coworkers who don't supervise or evaluate you people who only know you casually These letters are often too general and don't carry the kind of credibility programs need. A practical recommendation: a "balanced set" often works best If the program requires 3 letters, one great strategy is balance. Examples of strong combinations: For a professional master's applicant: 2 professional references 1 academic reference if available For a recent graduate: 2 academic references 1 professional or internship supervisor For a research or doctoral applicant: 2 academic references (ideally research-related) 1 professional or academic reference with strong writing/research insight If you are applying to multiple programs, adjust your letter mix depending on each program's expectations. What if I don't have any academic references? This is very common. If you don't have academic recommenders, here's what to do. choose professional recommenders who can speak to writing, analysis, and learning select recommenders who have evaluated your work formally use your statement of purpose to reinforce academic readiness consider taking one course before applying to build an academic reference That last one can be powerful. Even one graduate-level course or professional certification program can give you a current instructor who can write a meaningful academic letter. How to ask for a letter that actually helps you The best letters happen when you support your recommender. When you request a letter, provide: the program name and degree the deadline the submission process your resume or CV your draft statement of purpose 3 bullet points of what you hope they can emphasize a reminder of projects or accomplishments you worked on together This makes it easier for them to write a detailed letter. And detailed letters matter. What should the letter highlight for graduate admissions? Here are graduate-level qualities that recommenders can address: intellectual curiosity and ability to learn quickly strong writing and communication analytical thinking and problem-solving reliability and follow-through leadership and collaboration professionalism and integrity ability to handle feedback and grow time management and workload readiness If your recommender can provide examples in even 2 to 3 of these areas, you are in strong shape. Quick checklist: Are my non-academic letters acceptable? Ask yourself: does the program allow professional letters? have I been away from school for several years? can my recommender speak to my skills with specific examples? does the recommender know my work well? do my letters support my program goals and readiness? If yes, you're good. Final encouragement Let me close with this. Graduate programs want strong students. And strong students come from many paths. If your best recommenders are outside academia, that does not weaken your application. In fact, for many programs—especially professional programs—letters from supervisors and workplace mentors can be some of the strongest letters we read. The key is not academic or non-academic. The key is: credibility specific examples and clear evidence you are ready for graduate-level work Choose recommenders who know you well, can speak in detail, and genuinely want to support your next step. That is what makes a recommendation letter powerful.
How to Include Specific Examples in Your Graduate School Essay (and Still Stay Within the Word Limit)
If you've ever tried to write a graduate school essay, you've probably experienced this exact moment: You're writing along… feeling good… and then you check the word count. And suddenly your heart sinks. Because you're either: 400 words over the limit or 200 words under the limit or right at the limit… but your essay feels vague and generic And the biggest source of frustration is usually this: "I know I need to include specific examples… but examples take up so many words." If that's where you are, I want to reassure you: You're not a bad writer. You're just experiencing what almost every graduate applicant experiences—because great examples are what make an essay strong, but word limits are what make essays feel impossible. So today, I'm going to show you how to do both: include specific examples (the kind admissions committees actually remember) and stay within the word limit Let's jump in. Why examples matter so much in a graduate school essay Let's start with the "why," because it's important. When admissions committees read essays, they're not only looking for good intentions. They're looking for evidence. Examples are evidence. Examples show: what you've done how you think how you solve problems what you've learned what you're ready for Without examples, an essay becomes a list of claims. And the problem with claims is that anyone can make them. For example: "I'm a leader." "I'm passionate about equity." "I'm committed to community impact." "I'm ready for graduate-level work." All of those statements might be true. But admissions committees are quietly asking: "Can you show me?" That's where examples matter. The core challenge: examples increase detail, and detail increases word count This is the tension you're feeling: Specific examples make your essay stronger But you only have 500–1,000 words (sometimes even less) So the goal isn't to remove examples. The goal is to learn how to write examples efficiently. Think of it like this: You don't need more examples. You need better examples. And you need to write them in a way that delivers maximum impact in minimum space. The golden rule: one strong example is better than three weak ones Many applicants go over the word limit because they try to squeeze in everything they've ever done. But a strong grad essay usually needs: 2 to 4 strong examples total That's it. Not 10. Not your full resume. A few examples, chosen intentionally and written clearly, will always outperform an essay full of scattered experiences. Choose examples that do double (or triple) duty This is one of the most powerful strategies. A great example should demonstrate more than one strength at once. Instead of choosing examples that only show one thing, choose examples that show: skill impact growth and alignment with your goals Here's what that looks like: Weak example choice: one example for leadership one example for research one example for community service one example for teamwork That becomes too much. Stronger approach: Choose one experience that includes multiple dimensions. Example: A capstone project might show: research skills collaboration communication problem-solving commitment to a population readiness for graduate study That's a high-value example. Use the 3-sentence example formula This is one of my favorite techniques for staying within the word limit. When you include an example, limit yourself to three sentences: what you did what you learned how it connects to your goals Here's a template: Sentence 1: I did ________ in ________ setting. Sentence 2: This taught me ________ or helped me develop ________. Sentence 3: This connects to my goal of ________ and prepares me for ________. Here's how that sounds in real writing: "During my internship in student support services, I helped launch a peer mentoring program for transfer students. Through this work, I strengthened my ability to design support structures, analyze engagement patterns, and communicate across diverse stakeholder groups. This experience shaped my goal of pursuing graduate study in higher education to build equitable student success initiatives grounded in data and community needs." That's three sentences. Clear. Specific. Connected. And most importantly, efficient. Replace long storytelling with "high-density" details This is how you keep examples specific without writing a novel. Instead of spending 8 sentences describing the background, use details that condense the story. For example: Instead of: "I was working at a nonprofit and we were trying to help community members and there were many challenges and I learned a lot…" Use: "In my role as program coordinator at a community nonprofit, I managed outreach initiatives supporting first-generation college students." That one sentence includes: role setting purpose population That's high-density detail. When applicants run out of words, it's often because they are writing low-density sentences—sentences that take a lot of space without delivering much information. Use numbers strategically (they add clarity without adding length) Numbers are one of the easiest ways to make an example more concrete without adding word count. Examples: "served 200 participants" "increased event attendance by 30%" "led a team of 6" "supported a caseload of 25 clients" "managed a $10,000 budget" "developed a training module used by 40 staff members" Numbers make an essay feel real. And they take very few words. Avoid the "resume dump" paragraph This is a common pattern: Applicants add one long paragraph listing everything they've done. It usually sounds like: "I completed X, and I also worked at Y, and I volunteered at Z, and I participated in A…" This is where word counts explode. Instead, use fewer examples—but go deeper with intent. Remember: Graduate programs would rather understand 2 key experiences well than read 12 experiences poorly. Combine sentences using "stacking" Stacking is when you combine related details into one well-built sentence. Example: Instead of: "I worked as a graduate assistant. I supported faculty. I developed workshop content. I helped students with planning." Try: "As a graduate assistant, I supported faculty-led initiatives while designing student workshops focused on academic planning, motivation, and professional development." Same information. Far fewer words. Cut filler phrases that cost words without adding meaning This is the easiest way to reduce word count quickly. Here are common filler phrases to remove: "I believe that" "I feel that" "It is important to note that" "Due to the fact that" "In order to" "This experience helped me to" "I was able to" Replace them with stronger verbs. Examples: "I believe that" becomes "I know" or nothing at all "in order to" becomes "to" "helped me to develop" becomes "developed" "I was able to lead" becomes "I led" This is how you keep meaning but reduce length. Use an intentional outline so you don't overwrite Most word limit problems happen before the writing even begins. Because the applicant writes without a map. Try this simple outline that helps you control length: 10% hook + motivation 30% preparation and key examples 40% goals + program fit 20% conclusion and future impact When you assign "space" to each section, you naturally stay within the limit. A simple editing strategy: subtract 10% without losing substance If your essay is too long, don't panic. Here's a process that works almost every time. First pass: delete filler and repeated phrases Second pass: replace long phrases with shorter ones Third pass: reduce each example to 3 sentences Fourth pass: cut your weakest example Most essays can lose 10% of word count without losing meaning at all. In fact, they usually get stronger. Quick checklist: am I using examples efficiently? Before you submit, ask: Did I include 2–4 strong examples (not 8–10)? Do my examples show impact, skills, and growth? Did I connect each example to my graduate goals? Are my examples written in 3 sentences or less? Did I use numbers where possible? Did I remove filler phrases? If yes, you're right where you need to be. Final encouragement If you're trying to write a powerful grad school essay under a word limit, here's what I want you to remember: The word limit isn't there to restrict you. It's there to reveal something important. Can you communicate with clarity? Can you choose what matters most? Can you tell a focused story? That ability is part of graduate school readiness. So don't aim for an essay that includes everything. Aim for an essay that includes what matters. A few strong examples, written efficiently, will always outperform a long essay full of scattered details.
Overcoming Self-Doubt: Success Strategies from a CRNA Student's Perspective
Embarking on the journey of graduate school can feel both exhilarating and overwhelming. On this week's episode of the "Victors in Grad School" podcast, host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Marissa Charles, a current student in the Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA) program at the University of Michigan Flint, to explore the heart, grit, and strategies needed to thrive in grad school. Marissa Charles shares a story that many prospective students will find deeply relatable. After completing her Bachelor's in Nursing and working for several years—including through the COVID-19 pandemic—she initially dismissed the idea of returning to school. "I always said I'd never be smart enough to be a CRNA," Marissa admits, pointing to the self-doubt that can plague even high-achievers. Her journey is a powerful testament to the idea that growth comes not just from academic readiness, but personal readiness. Sometimes, it's about timing and gaining confidence in oneself, rather than inherent capability. A central theme throughout the episode is the importance of mentorship and community. Marissa credits much of her success to the robust support network within her program. From the moment students are accepted, they're paired with mentors who guide them not just academically, but through the personal transitions essential to thriving in an intensive program. Extra-curricular opportunities, like mixers with students from other universities, further broaden the sense of camaraderie. Grad school is no easy path. Marissa emphasizes the necessity of balance, self-advocacy, and strong communication. She reflects on strategies for managing bumps in the road—whether it's an unexpected personal crisis or the all-too-familiar imposter syndrome. Her advice is universal: don't be afraid to reach out for help, and remember that setbacks are a normal part of the journey. Faculty, family, and peers are eager to support—you just have to take the first step. Whether you are considering grad school, in the midst of a program, or mentoring others, this episode offers inspiration and practical advice. Marissa's narrative proves that with determination, support, and clear priorities, pursuing an advanced degree is not only possible, but rewarding. Ready to find encouragement and actionable tips on your own grad school path? Tune in to this episode of "Victors in Grad School" and join a community invested in your success. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. So excited to have you back again this week. As always, we are on a journey together. I say it's a journey, and I know every week I say this, but it is so true that you are on a journey. You've made a decision. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:32]: Whether you are just the very beginning and you're just starting to think about graduate school, or maybe you've applied, maybe you've gotten accepted, maybe you're in a graduate program. No matter where you are, this is a journey from start to end of that graduate degree, and there are things that you can do right now, today, to be able to find success sooner. And that's what this podcast is all about. I love meeting with you every week to be able to provide you some things to think about, some perspectives, some thoughts, and especially to bring you others that have gone before you that are either in graduate school now, they've gone to graduate school in the past, and they are excited to be able to share their own journey with you so that you can learn from it and maybe repeat some things, maybe not repeat some things, to be able to help you to make your journey as smooth as it can be. Today we got another great guest. Marissa Charles is with us, and Marissa is a student within the Nurse Anesthetist program at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to be able to talk to her and to learn more about her journey in and through graduate school. Marissa, thanks so much for being here today. Marissa Charles [00:01:45]: Thank you, it is my sincere pleasure. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:47]: I am really excited to be able to have you here today, and I think first and foremost, I know you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan Flint. You got a bachelor's degree in nursing at the University of Michigan Flint, and then you went off, you went off, you worked and started in your career, and at some point you made the decision for that you wanted to continue that education. Bring me back to that point, that point in your life where you said, "It's time." Why was it the time to make that jump? And what made you decide to go all in? Marissa Charles [00:02:21]: 100%. So I graduated December of 2020, definitely a crazy time in the world. I became a nurse. I started working. I never said, "Go back to school, Dr. Lewis." I said I'd never go back. My bachelor's degree was enough. There's no way I'm doing it again. Marissa Charles [00:02:37]: I graduated when I was 23, so I was working for a few years and I always said I'd never be smart enough to be a CRNA. And looking back at that is like, it makes me laugh because it shows just how you grow as a person truly through life. Because here I am, it's 2026 now. Um, in 2023, I finally made that decision where, hold on, it's not that I wasn't smart enough, it just was that I wasn't ready. I was a new nurse. I was coming outta nursing school, COVID was happening. We were seeing the sickest patients ever during that time. It was scary. Marissa Charles [00:03:14]: And it's not that it wasn't smart enough, I just wasn't ready. So 3 years or 2, 2 and a half years into my nursing experience, I was looking around and I just felt as though I'm missing something, like something— I wanna do more. I want to advance my education. I feel as though I'm at a point in my clinical experience where I have truly become a clinician that was an expert within my critical care standards. So in 2023, I was like, I think it's time. I don't know what I wanna do yet, but it's something. And that's when I started looking at graduate programs around the state of Michigan, what was out there for nurses. There's a lot of different paths you can take. Marissa Charles [00:03:59]: You can become a nurse practitioner. There is— perfusion, there's PAs, there's a lot you can do in graduate programs right now. And CRNA, I still felt like I wasn't smart enough for. So it took me about another year. In 2024 is when I finally was like, why not bite the bullet? Why not go for the hard road of what this program is? Because with a hard road comes a lot of feeling super good about yourself and confident and getting the most out of your education. So I decided in 2024 that I would start applying. And this process takes a long time. It's 2020, I started fall of 2025. Marissa Charles [00:04:41]: So it does take a little bit of time to go from deciding you want to go back to school, getting your application in, getting an acceptance and starting. But here we are, you know, 2 years, January of '24 to January— February of 2026 to being in it. So that's a little bit of my story. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:59]: And I, I've said that you are in the University of Michigan Flint's nurse anesthetist program, the CRNA program. Marissa Charles [00:05:07]: CRNA program. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:08]: And as you said, you did some research, you looked around, and I know that there are other CRNA programs in the state of Michigan that you could have chosen, and outside of the state of Michigan as well. So talk to me about that and what made you decide to not only apply to the CRNA program at the University of Michigan Flint, but also that once you got that acceptance, that, that was the program that was right for you. Marissa Charles [00:05:33]: So, uh, there's 5 programs in Michigan, so you have a lot to choose from. And there's so many different reasons that you can look into different programs. Obviously I'm a little biased 'cause I spent my undergraduate program at the University of Michigan Flint. So I looked back and when I was in my undergraduate program, I was working alongside of anesthesia students. They were there with me during my undergrad. So I got to see a little bit of kind of what they did on a semi-day-to-day basis. But it really still wasn't a level playing field because it's been 4 or 5 years since I went to undergrad. I've been kind of all over the state of Michigan, but really the biggest thing that brought me back to Michigan, which is kind of what I love so much about my undergrad program, is truly the relationship that the faculty has with their students and how much importance we put on student-to-student relationships. Marissa Charles [00:06:27]: And I'm gonna mention mentor, mentor, mentor probably a million times in the next 20 minutes that we talk, but our program, even before you start, they offer webinars, open houses, opportunities for you to meet the faculty to get an idea of who they are because you're applying to be in the program. It's just as much backwards. They want the best of the best to be in a program. And so it's just as much as me choosing them as it is they're choosing us. So I really, really love that about our program is the relationships that we build and then just how much importance we put on building relationships, mentorships, and then wellness is super huge. So after literally you got your acceptance letter, and then right before we start the program, they pair you up with a mentor and start building that relationship on how can we help you get through this next 3 years. And here's this person that's doing the same thing you're doing, but they're a little bit ahead of you, so they have a little bit of insight on how to get you through the program, which is super huge for me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:31]: You've been successful. You made that transition in, you're going through the program right now. You're mentoring other students as well and helping other people in the program. So you've been able to find success thus far. But I also know that there is a transition. You went through a nursing degree, but just because you went through a nursing degree as an undergraduate student doesn't mean that the way you're being educated, the, the expectations of the faculty are going to be the same at the graduate level. And usually they're heightened to a much greater degree. So talk to me about that transition for yourself and what did you have to do as you transitioned into graduate school and what have you had to do along the way as you've been going through this graduate program to help you find success? Marissa Charles [00:08:17]: I think half of, like, our student success is a tad bit about our director, is our director has basically taught every single class in our program. So one thing that created such a success for us as a cohort is that the way that our classes are built and the way they're structured is to allow for that transition to happen. And I don't know if there's many other programs that can say that they have faculty that have truly taught everything and have reworked all of these classes to create student success. That first semester, most of us have been out of school for 3, 4, 5 years. And so building a first semester where you're learning how to be a graduate student again, learning how to stop working again, learning how to facilitate your life around being a student, but also you're still a partner or a mother or a dog mom. You're still the person you are outside of school, but being a student is 100% that first semester and what that looks like. So I'd say the biggest thing is providing us with support in that first semester and building a class list that is doable was super big. And then really the biggest thing is I am super crazy about looking ahead really far, just like mentally prepare yourself. Marissa Charles [00:09:35]: Like right now I'm in my second semester and I'm looking at third already. I mean, we just started 5 weeks ago, but in order to be successful as a graduate student, you have to focus on what you're doing right now, but you have to be 3 or 4 steps ahead. So looking at— I'm starting clinicals in April. May, and knowing that I need to start mentally preparing myself for what does clinicals look like? What does creating lunches and being outside of the house a lot more, driving a lot more distances, things like that, to create a better, smoother transition for a student instead of it being very abrupt. So I'd say like, definitely, I love that our faculty have created a streamline of courses that really kind of ramp up just in the perfect amount each semester, but also being a productive student more than you were in your nursing program, where a lot of this is independent. They're not going to tell you exactly what you need to be doing at home and kind of figuring that out for yourself to be successful. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:35]: You also mentioned the fact that it was so important for you to have a mentor and that your program aligned you specifically with a student mentor, but there are also mentorships that you build in regards to the connections with your faculty members as well, and that's important too. So Talk to me about mentorship, and if your program is not offering you the type of formal program that, let's say, that you had in your program, what are some things that you've seen to be able to allow for you to be able to build relationships with others that you might not have been formally connected with before you were in the program? Marissa Charles [00:11:11]: So our program sets you up with a mentor, and we— your mentor kind of chooses you in a way, and you're kind of connected on familiarity. So I was lucky enough to get a mentor that I actually was her trainer as an ICU nurse. I trained her and now it's her opportunity to give it back to me, which is super amazing. And I love that so much. But you're paired up with a mentor before you even start. And we meet them even before we start the program. They throw, uh, orientation meet and greet. And so it's an opportunity for us to say like, hey, like, what can I do before we start? What can I do in that first week of classes when Canvas opens finally? And we're so excited. Marissa Charles [00:11:50]: How can I get ahead? Ahead. So that is super important. And then our faculty are super awesome, and every quarter they set up wellness days, and those wellness days are opportunities for all 3 years, for second and third year students to get together and continue to build those relationships. We have a mentor, but that's just one person, but there's 30 people in each year, so there's the opportunity for 100 of us to get together and, and build faces to names, names to faces, because ultimately we're going to be coworkers or we're gonna follow each other in clinical. We're gonna have opportunities to connect on different scales and being able to see each other, you know, once every quarter is super huge. So that is something that we do that I appreciate. But obviously there's opportunities outside of school that you kind of have to push yourself a little further to be able to make relationships with people while you're in a higher degree. So for example, with the nurse anesthesia programs, or I should say nurse anesthesia There's the Michigan Nurse Anesthetist, um, essentially board. Marissa Charles [00:12:54]: Like everyone has like, as a board across the Michigan and we have MANA and there's MANA for students. And so I just came back last week. They had a meeting with all 5 programs. That's optional. You don't have to go, but why would you not take 4 hours out of a Friday night to go to a mixer of 5 different programs across the state of Michigan to pair up with these different students from different places? Because like I said, we met may end up being coworkers one day, or we may see each other in clinical, and being able to see how different programs are doing it and how are they getting through their 3 years to be successful in the program is super big to me. So going that extra step to doing those optional things that it's not mandatory, but it could otherwise increase your success in finding different things out from different people across all of Michigan. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:48]: And you're in a rigorous program, which is challenging in itself, but you're also a friend, you have family, you've got other hats that you're wearing. So talk to me about balance and how do you find balance in your school, your work, your family, and other personal responsibilities while you've been in graduate school? Marissa Charles [00:14:09]: That is the question of the hour, Dr. Lewis. How do we do it? I think as a nurse, that's something that you inherently know because there's weeks where are tough weeks at work and you have to be able to kind of figure that out. You have to work overtime, or it's the holidays and you're balancing holidays with taking care of your own family. In the graduate program, it's harder in the aspect of you have to say no. You have to be able to know there's a priority. You have an exam on Monday, it's Saturday night, that I can't do that. But there's also Friday night I can, I just have to be responsible with my time. Marissa Charles [00:14:48]: So I think it's definitely very difficult as a graduate student on having to say no and really create a balanced schedule, but I think it really starts before you start. We're super big at Michigan. We do a family meeting and it gives you the opportunity for our director to explain to our family members from her perspective, not ours, cuz we, I mean, we've explained this to our family probably a million times. This is gonna be hard. This is gonna be hard. But she speaks to our family and gives them basically a rundown of what it looks like to be a student and what her expectations of us are and what her expectations of them are. And it kind sets a precedent of it's not just me going through the program, everyone in your household's going through the program. It's just as difficult for those people around you as it is for you. Marissa Charles [00:15:36]: So I think that, um, it does start before you start and kind of setting expectations. And if it ends up being a great semester and you end up doing more things, it's awesome. But knowing that at minimum, this is where I have to study, I have to set aside time. If I'm able to do more, great, but at minimum, this is what we have to do. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:55]: And setting those expectations, I think, are really important, not only for yourself, but also for your family and friends, et cetera. I tell students all the time that having those type of communication meetings, whether they're from a program to family members, it's even more important to have from student to family or friends as well, because you may set parameters at the beginning of a term without realizing or understanding what that term is really gonna be like. And what I try to make sure that any student thinks about is if things change, that's fine, but communicate it out. Because if you've promised to call mom every day of the week and you're only calling once a week, guess who's going to be really concerned when you're not calling? Mom's going to be concerned. So make sure that you're communicating and letting people know. They're not going to be upset with you. They're going to be more happy that you've communicated and that you're keeping them informed because they want to support you. And that's what this is all about, is that the people that have always been a support are going to continue to be your support, but they need to know how to support you through the process. Marissa Charles [00:17:01]: Yep, 100%. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:02]: I know that through the program sometimes there are bumps along the way and there are things that happen that are unexpected, whether it be a bad grade, whether it be a family issue, whether it be whatever. And I know that you even had some of those in your own experience. Talk to me about what you would say to other students that have those bumps in the road and what would recommend for students to do when that does happen? Marissa Charles [00:17:28]: I think the biggest thing, like reflecting back on like those times, is like try— it's so hard in the moment when you feel like your world is crashing and you feel like so overwhelmed— is to like pull yourself out of it for 3 seconds and just like take a breather, relax. Because at the end of the day, the biggest thing about Michigan no matter if it was my undergrad or graduate program, is our faculty are there for you. And I think that it's, it's so funny because she— our director in our fac— CRSS— they say it so many times, and I understand now being on the other side of it and having to go to them why they say it so many times, because it's almost like ingrained into you at that point. So when you are so overwhelmed and you're so frustrated, you're going through something so difficult, it's so inherently easy to just reach out. And I think that, you know, 10, 20 years ago, that was— might not have been a thing. And so it's hard because the hardest thing to do is make the first step to like reach out and ask for help or reach out and say, I don't know what I need, but this is what's going on. And so that to me is like the, the easiest and the hardest thing to do is like take 5 seconds for yourself and just stop and like figure out who you need to talk to and talk to that person because you're not alone. This program, whether it's your support systems at home or your support system within your program, there's always someone someone there to talk to. Marissa Charles [00:18:54]: And I think that that is the hardest thing, is like figuring out how to approach those people that you— they are your directors or your assistant directors, your faculty. They're up here and you're like, oh, I'm just so little, it's just me, like I don't want to bother them. But that's what they're there for, and I think it's so hard to overcome that. But now I understand why it's, it's so drilled into us so many times during our orientation, during any type of clinical, clinical prep workshop, is they just want to help. They're there to help you get through those hard points in life. So I think the hardest thing is, is to actually reach out, but once you do that, everything feels like it falls into place just as quickly as everything kind of blew up. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:35]: And sometimes that will happen. And I'm not sugarcoating it for anyone. When you go through graduate school, life happens. And whether you like it or not, there could be really positive things, there could be things that are negative that may happen, one of the things that I would always tell a student to do is communicate, communicate with your program. Make sure to talk with your program about what is happening because your program wants you to be successful and the director, the staff, the faculty are going to try their best to be able to support you in that moment and to find resources for you in that moment. Sometimes, as Marissa just said, sometimes at that point in time you just can't think straight and you're thinking, I just need to fix I need to go, I need to do this, I need to go, go, go, and you're like, I'm out of here. Take that pause, send that email, pick up the phone, make the call, because if they know upfront there's going to be a lot more that they can do than if you just fall off the radar and are dealing with something that you should be dealing with. But if the program doesn't know that, that could impact you in many different ways. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:43]: So just like I was talking about communicating with family and friends, it's also important to communicate communicate with your faculty, with your director, with staff in the program, and to talk to them about things that are happening because they may or may not know what's happening with you personally. And that's up to you. That's your right. You can keep it to yourself, but the more that you are able to build that relationship, the more that they're gonna step in and be able to support you in the end. Now, one of the things that I'm interested in knowing as well is many students as they're going through— you talked about at the very beginning, always thinking that the CRNA RNA program was not something that you would be able to do because you didn't think you were smart enough. And there are many times when you go through graduate programs and graduate school itself that sometimes that self-doubt, that imposter syndrome, steps in, and it can rear its head in many different ways. Talk to me about how imposter syndrome or self-doubt reared its head for you, and how did you deal with it? Marissa Charles [00:21:44]: We're in a rigorous program. We are in— I there's hundreds of people that apply to this program and ideally they're taking top 10%, 5%, 50%, whoever knows. And so day to day you're taking exams, you're comparing yourself to others. You're like, oh man, why didn't I get, you know, this question right? That person got it right. My grade is this grade, their grade's that— it's so easy to get so wrapped up in the minuscule details and feeling like you need to compare yourself to others. And this last 2 semesters, I'm gonna go back to our director. I love her. She has watched, you know, multiple years of students go through this program. Marissa Charles [00:22:26]: And it feels like right at that time where you feel— we call it the valley of despair, that time where you feel yourself dipping and you're like, feel like you can't see the sun and you can't see when the next good day's coming. She gives us that inspirational message that we need, you know? And it's so— it's so— and she has it down to a science where just when you need that, that bump of inspiration of saying like, you know, you are— you're meant to be here. You are smart enough to be here. I picked you because I knew— I know you can do it. Let me know how I can get you through this because I know you can. It's just getting you the resources or figuring it out, right? It's, it's, it's so funny because I, I genuinely think she's done this and done it so well for so long that she knows just right coming into second semester. Students get so overwhelmed that first, second week that it's so much more material, so much more to do. And that's when we have that time with her to say like, no, you can do it. Marissa Charles [00:23:31]: This is how we're gonna step back to be successful and not try to compare ourselves to others. Be the best person that you can be on your own is super huge because is imposter syndrome. That is the hardest thing to overcome before, during, and after this program. So just being able to kind of like point it out and see the red flags when they're coming is super huge for me. Sitting down, like pausing for a second and saying like, no, like I am doing the best I can. I'm here for a reason. I will be successful is super huge when you're by yourself. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:24:06]: Now I know that you're currently in graduate school, you're working toward the light at the end of the tunnel. As you you think back to the experience that you've had thus far in your graduate education, and you think of others that are thinking about graduate school, whether it's going into becoming a nurse— a nurse anesthetist, a physical therapist, getting an MBA, whatever it might be— what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Marissa Charles [00:24:32]: Put one foot in front of the other. I think that's the hardest part. I think, you know, we're all adults that are applying to graduate school. We all have jobs, we all have things going on, and I think the hardest— for people when they're applying to go back to school isn't necessarily the school. It's all the steps that you have to do to get back to school. It's the long application process. It's getting proof of all your documents. It's putting together records requests. Marissa Charles [00:24:58]: One foot in front of the other, 'cause that's truly the hardest part. Write down that deadline. Make sure that deadline's on a huge sticky. Put reminders in your phone. It's all the little steps that it takes to get to where you wanna go. So that's probably my biggest thing is like, like you can do it. It just takes a lot of little steps to get to where you wanna be. And then I would say probably the second thing is try your hardest to, to build your application or build your process, build your resume to show who you are as a person. Marissa Charles [00:25:29]: I think that's the hardest thing is the biggest question that people ask when they're applying to programs is like, how, how do I, how can I get in? Like, what can I do? And the biggest thing is trying your hardest to show who you are as a person who you are as a nurse, who you are as a student on paper is probably the hardest thing to do because that is all you are when you're compared to hundreds of people. You have to figure out how to display yourself the best that you can, whether that's in your essay or, or in your CV, is try your hardest to build that out to show who you are as a person. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:05]: Well, Marissa, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today, and I know it's not over yet, but I'm I'm looking forward to being able to see you cross that stage here in the not too distant future. And I'm really appreciative of all that you said today as well, because as you mentioned, it's not always going to— there are going to be bumps in the road. It's important to have those mentors. And there's so many little pieces that you talked about today that I think are so important for any program and any student thinking about graduate school. So I really appreciate you sharing that, and I wish you all the best. Marissa Charles [00:26:35]: No problem. Thank you, Dr. Lewis. Always. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:37]: The University of Michigan-Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
From Dropout to Doctorate: Dr. Rita Fields' Inspiring Educational Journey
Navigating graduate school isn't a straight line—it's a journey full of turns, challenges, and unexpected lessons. In the latest episode of "Victors in Grad School," host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Dr. Rita Fields, a lecturer at the University of Michigan Flint's School of Management, to explore her unconventional, inspiring path through higher education. Whether you're already on your grad school journey, considering taking the leap, or supporting someone who is, this episode is brimming with honesty and actionable wisdom you won't want to miss. Dr. Rita Fields candidly shares her beginnings as a high school dropout who returned to education, ultimately building a career in human resources and pushing herself to the highest academic levels—including earning a doctorate while juggling executive work and family life. One major theme is perseverance: She discusses the powerful role self-motivation and setting clear boundaries played in her success, especially when life threw unexpected hurdles in her way. A key takeaway from the episode is the stark contrast between undergraduate, master's, and doctoral studies. Dr. Fields describes graduate school as "straight broth with no water added"—a deep, immersive experience that requires true engagement with your chosen field. Whereas undergraduate education is about finishing what you start and getting well-rounded, graduate studies demand critical analysis and, at the doctoral level, becoming the expert who can teach the topic. Another highlight is the discussion about burnout and self-doubt. Dr. Fields is refreshingly honest about reaching points where she questioned her ability to go on, and even considered quitting. The key, she says, is being kind to yourself, setting and honoring boundaries, building a support system, and remembering that challenges and stress are inherent in all meaningful pursuits. Finally, Dr. Fields offers clear advice: take graduate education seriously, resist the urge to just "check the box," and prioritize real learning over simply accumulating credentials. Understand your limits, be honest with yourself about your capacity, and remember—it's okay if your path takes a little longer. Ready for candid insights, practical tips, and a big dose of inspiration? Listen to the full episode to hear Dr. Rita Fields' journey and discover how you, too, can chart your own successful grad school path—even when it gets tough. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:06]: experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week we are on a journey together. It's really important that you know that this is not a— always a— going to be a linear path. It may be a little bit circuitous. You may end up coming and going and getting different types of educational experiences along the way. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:36]: But hopefully you've done that work to be able to know what your goal is, and you find ways to be able to hit those benchmarks along the way to be able to help you to keep moving toward the goals that you have set for yourself. Every week I love being able to introduce you to new people with different experiences that have all had their own experiences in graduate school, And they're here to share that experience with you so that you can build some tools for your toolbox to help you in that journey that you're on. Today we got another great guest. Dr. Rita Fields is with us today. And Dr. Fields is a lecturer for— at the University of Michigan Flint. That basically means she's been teaching classes for a bit and she teaches a number of different areas within our School of Management. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:26]: And I'm really excited to be able to have her here to be able to talk to you about her experiences to have her here on the show this week. Dr. Fields, thanks so much for being here. Dr. Rita Fields [00:01:38]: You're so welcome. Thank you for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:40]: I am really excited to be able to have you here and to talk about your own journey. And I know I love starting the show with an opportunity to turn the clock back in time. I know that you did your bachelor's degree down at Marygrove College in Detroit, and I know that at that time you got a Bachelor of Arts in English and Psychology. And then you went out, you got some experience, and along the way, at some point during that time that you were working, getting different experiences, you made a decision. You made a decision that you were going to go back to school and get a graduate degree. Take me back to that point. And what made it the right time, the right place for you to say, now I'm going to go back, I'm going to get that next part of my education? And, and take me back and talk to me about that. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:29]: Yeah, so that's interesting. I don't know if I've ever thought about that time isolated in the way that you just described. But when I decided to go back for my master's degree, I had a son who was 8, maybe? Somewhere along there? When I got my undergrad degree, he turned 5. And so it was about a couple years later-ish. And I had decided that I really appreciated and loved my undergraduate education at Marygrove, absolutely adored it, and that perhaps I should further myself to open more opportunities up for myself and to learn how far I could advance. At that point, I was already within my chosen field of human resources, and so I decided to go back to school to get a master's in human resources. And I was really grateful to do it. I'd read a lot about the program. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:30]: I understood that there was— and, and came to confirm for myself that there's a huge difference between graduate school and undergrad. So I was really excited to embark on that journey. And it was a— it was good timing for me when I decided to go back. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:47]: Now, I know you just said that you loved your experience as an undergrad, so that probably played into why you decided to get that master's degree at Marygrove College. Were there any other mitigating factors when you were looking at whether you wanted to go back to Marygrove, which is where you ended up deciding to go, or if you were considering other schools? And if so, what were you looking for in a program that you ultimately then decided on attending? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:13]: So yes, I did decide to stay at Marygrove, and I, I'll be honest, it was really nice. To contemplate getting that advanced degree in an environment that I was always really— always— I was already really comfortable with. So that was a huge selling point for me, that I understood the campus, I understood the way things worked, I knew the services that were available. Because I did have a young child at the time, I also knew that I had the ability to have childcare services if I had evening classes. So there were lots of elements of the campus that were very attractive to me. In terms of the degree program itself, I really wanted a rigorous program that allowed me to delve deeper into the wide expanse of knowledge that is human resources. Human resources is a very broad field, and so I wanted to make sure that I had a program that exposed me to people who were in the field, who were diverse and who would allow me to further my own professional life in such a way that the, the learning of the material would complement my practical application day to day. So I was really fortunate in that way. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:39]: Now, down the road, you finished that degree and then you went and worked some more. You got some other experiences and down the road you said, I'm still not done, I'm going to keep going back. And this time I want to go and get a terminal degree. And I guess bring me back to that point. What was going on in your career? What was going through your head as you were saying to yourself, I'm not done, I want to continue and I want to keep pushing myself forward in this way? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:05]: So when I decided to go back for my doctorate, I was well into my career at that time. I was an executive actually, and I worked at Henry Ford Health System., and I was about to accept a position to open on the operational team to open their, their new hospital, which was Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital. So this was a couple— about a year or so before I went into that process. And I have to tell you, this might sound weird, but the reason I decided to go on to get my doctorate is because I just wanted to see what I could do intellectually. I, I'll bet you don't know this, I was a high school dropout. And so I was someone who— I left school the first day of my 12th grade year and I had a very tumultuous experience, but eventually I went back to school and I learned how incredibly important it was for me to maximize my learning potential and that, that helped me to deal with things that happened in my life that I didn't have any control over. But if I could figure out a way to understand it, if I could figure out a way to wrap my mind around how to procedurally advance in my career and to really delve deeply into what the possibilities were in my mind. I know that might sound weird or super nerdy or both, but that's really what initially made me think about it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:40]: I did take quite a bit of time trying to determine the type of program that I would go into. I knew I did not want a PhD. I know that's— I'm going to get some smoke about that, but I did not want a traditional PhD The thing that drew me to my program was the fact that it was a Doctor of Management, so it's a terminal degree. So it's still a doctorate, but it's not theoretically grounded, it's more grounded in practical application. So I fell in love with the program. I met amazing people. It was a cohort program. It is definitely the most difficult time I've ever had academically. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:22]: It stretched me into intellectually beyond what I thought I was going to be able to do. And at a couple of points in the very beginning and right before I ended my coursework, I wondered if I was gonna be able to do it. It was just so difficult. I have one textbook that I still remember the COVID and the name of the book to this day. I literally read that book 4 times. I still have no idea what it was talking about. But I— so I got that weird thing that I wanted to get where I wanted to sort of see like, what— how far can I push myself intellectually? I definitely solved that question for myself with that doctorate degree. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:06]: So now at every level of education, as you're transitioning into that degree and transitioning through that degree, there are transitions going from being an undergraduate student into a master's degree, a master's degree to a doctorate, the faculty require different things, they expect different things. And as a student, you have to be able to perform, you have to be able to lift yourself up to the level that you're being challenged to be at. So as you are going— as you went through those own— your own transitions for yourself, talk to me about what you had to do as you transitioned into those programs, and what did you have to do— going through the programs to be able to continue and maintain that success throughout the entire journey? And let me put one other caveat on it is because you did two other degrees, how was it different between what you had to do at the master's level and what you had to do at the doctorate level? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:00]: First of all, I always tell my students that there are differences in the levels of education. So when you go into the undergraduate environment, it's it's really about being able to complete what you start, right? I think that's why a lot more people start undergrad degrees than finish them. Like, dramatically more people start than finish. And so merely finishing a multi-year course is really impressive and somewhat rare, unfortunately. I, I wish it were more common, but it is not because you have to go through remaining committed. The undergrad degree experience is normally much more rich with courses that aren't necessarily tied to your major, but they're supposed to round you out a bit. That's the way that I would describe it. Your master's degree is really like a deep, concentrated deep dive. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:55]: So it's like, um, it's like straight broth with no water added. It's just undiluted major. So hopefully you like that major. If not, you're really gonna get irritated really, really quickly. And then the master's degree, I try to explain to my students is like— the difference between that and the undergrad degree is that an undergrad degree, you pretty much have to prove that you can take in information and that you have digested that information and give it back in some form. The master's degree, in my experience, is that you're able to take in information, to digest it, and then perhaps to analyze it from different perspectives. Is there a different way to look at this? Is there anything missing from that? The doctorate degree is at the pinnacle of the learning ladder because you not only have to take in the information, analyze it, resource it, you have to go through some type of a vetting process where you make sure that the doctoral level, uh, or the information that you're learning at the doctoral level, is that valid? You have to determine whether or not you are looking at seminal leaders within your particular field and, and what they said, and is there anything that's missing? So it's having to digest information to a point where you could potentially get to the point— well, not even potentially, but you could get to the point, because once you defend your dissertation, you should be an expert at your topic, where you could teach that topic. And when you are able to fully teach, you are able to show the different complexities and nuances that are really inherent in any topic that you want to explore. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:40]: So I think that— but in terms of your final bit, in terms of how I tried to prepare myself for each level, I think when I went into my master's degree program, I still had the undergraduate mindset. And so I was able to relax a bit because I was— everybody in class was interested in the same master's degree. So there wasn't quite as much diversity in terms of experience. We all sort of worked in the same field. And so it was almost like this really beautiful sense of camaraderie that I got because at the master's level, that's really what that's about. At the doctorate level, it's pretty much like you're on your own. Like, you're— like, let's just say you're this, this— your mom has puppies and the puppies are the other people in your cohort, and she sort of leaves you outside in the storm for like 5 years. That's, that's pretty much what it feels like. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:31]: You have to figure stuff out yourself No one is going to come and check on you. I remember registering for writing semesters for my doctorate and there were no instructors. I just had to pay to write it, which I thought was absolutely insane. The level of support mechanisms start to diminish a bit because you're moving into this space where you should be more self-directed. And by the time you get to your doctoral level, that's also probably why there are people who are ABD for 25 5 years, which is not something to brag about, by the way. The only time it's great is when you're ABD right before you finish it. After that, it's like, oh, you— so you never finished, huh? So it's really, really hard, and you have to be internally motivated. And so it really taught me how to keep myself on pace and to become even more organized and really respect the journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:30]: I will say that in my own doctorate experience, I will say that if you're in a doctorate program with a cohort for your coursework, those individuals do become a core group and they do tend to push you along through the coursework and support you. It's after you get out of the main coursework and as Dr. Fields was talking about, you get into that writing, there's a lot more self-push that has to happen. Doesn't mean that your cohort doesn't check in every once in a while because sometimes they will and be like, hey, where's everybody? But that being said, it becomes much more on you. And you and your dissertation chair in having a conversation and being able to set benchmarks and make sure that you keep pushing yourself to meet the benchmarks so that you don't remain, as Dr. Field says, ABD. I always say ABD is all but done, and that's true because it's all but dissertation, but ABD also could mean all but done, and you don't want to end up ABD. You want to end up finished with a degree in hand, especially if you're putting the time and effort in. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:37]: Now, One of the things that I hear from a lot of students as they go— are moving into a master's degree, a doctorate degree, as they go through these degrees, is that there is a point in time where they have self-doubt. There's a point in time where they feel, I'm going to say, imposter syndrome, where they may question and say, am I good enough? Should I be here? Why did they select me? Talk to me about how that self-doubt or imposter syndrome crept into your own experiences. In graduate school? And what did you do? And how did you deal with that as you were going through your own programs? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:10]: I'm gonna be honest with you, I didn't experience imposter syndrome. And it could be because when I took the GMAT, which was a requirement for my doctoral program, I passed the writing part within the 5th percentile or something, did really, really well with writing, and I bombed pretty much the rest of the thing. I mean, like, I just totally— and I was like, well, you know, hey, we can't all be perfect at everything. And So I was aware of that from the very beginning. I knew I could write. I knew I was very good at reading and context. And I knew that even though my doctorate was a business degree, my master's was a business degree too, but my doctorate was, was much more intensive in, in the business curriculum. So I knew that if I could get past all of the courses in econ and the other deep strategic courses that were part of my doctoral curriculum that I could write my dissertation. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:10]: So I viewed it from that perspective. So I never felt like I didn't belong there. I always felt like I represented the liberal art faction because both of my undergraduate degrees were in liberal arts. I had written so many papers I'd lost count. So I was very comfortable from that vantage point, but I also had members of my cohort who were diehard practitioners, who had been in the business world for a very long time, who maybe didn't read as many books, but they had very different experiences. Where I think I was most challenged in my degree was towards the end. It was probably right before I wrapped up completing all of my coursework, which for those of you who aren't aware— well, in my program anyway, you had to go go through 2 years of coursework, and then I went through 3 years of writing my dissertation. 3 years, y'all, not 3 months. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:08]: It took 3 full years of writing. But right before I completed my coursework, I was an executive at Henry Ford Health System, and we were opening a hospital, and it was getting really, really tight. There was so much work that goes into that, so many meetings, So many late nights. I happened to be going through a divorce at the same time, which in and of itself is— can be extremely traumatic. It's very tiresome. And I was— I was supposedly wrapping up my coursework, and I remember thinking to myself, I don't know if I can do this. I think I might have to drop out. And I thought about it for a little while, and then I asked myself, would you be okay with yourself in 5 years if you dropped out now? And I wisely answered to myself that I would not be okay if I did that, and then I was gonna do everything that I could. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:07]: So I had to really double down on my boundary setting. I had to double down on devoting time to study because we had our qualifying exams, which are these major tests that you get during the doctorate. We had them So my coursework was 2 years. I had one set at the end of the first year and one set at the end of the second year, and they were so difficult. I still remember one of the questions, and the answer to the question was 22 pages handwritten in a book. It was insane. If I told you the question, you would get angry about it. Don't— I think about it, it makes me mad. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:40]: But so I had to buckle down, I had to study it. My doctoral program was the first time I ever really had to to study. I know that sounds like a flex, but it's not cool to find out that you don't know how to study when you're in your doctoral program. Um, other than that, I, you know, I read a lot, and I, you know, I was really good at context. So I, I would have to create ways to force myself to retain lots of information in the midst of all of these professional and personal challenges. So that was the time at which I thought I might drop out. I'm so incredibly grateful that I did not. I pushed through, and it is the only B+ on my doctoral transcript, which, you know, I tell students also all the time, you know, people are so into their grades. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:27]: I'm like, look, let me tell you something, grades matter, but sometimes you might have a B+— like, that B+ on my transcript is my proudest grade because I was going to quit and I didn't, and I did the absolute very best I could under incredible circumstances. And I pulled out a B+. So I'm good with it. So that, that would be my— but yes, I'm— it's certainly not unusual to feel those types of challenges. And quite frankly, even though I was in a cohort and it was wonderful, and I'm still friends with a lot of the people that were in my cohort to this day, we also had several people drop out. So that's not exactly motivating when you're sitting with a group of 11 people and then 3 of them say, you know what, this is insane, I'm not doing it. You sort of wonder Are they crazy or am I crazy? I mean, so it was, it was, uh, complicated, but thankfully it worked out in the end. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:24]: Now I know that you were working while you were going through these type of programs, and that takes a lot of balance in being able to wear the multiple hats that you wear to be able to be there for the people around you, the friends, the family, and more, as well as to be the employee, the student, et cetera. So talk to me about balance, what you had to do to be able to find that optimal balance, whatever that definition is, and what were some of the things that you had to do to be able to maintain that throughout your different graduate school experiences? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:00]: Yeah, that's a great question. So I believe very strongly in having boundaries, and I know that's something that a lot of people struggle with. I'm not typically one of those people, and I really learned how to do that in graduate school. When you're— in graduate school and there are so many things, particularly as you get closer to the end. As my students may recall, I often refer to it as senioritis. You think, oh, I'm almost done, like, this is gonna— I'm gonna skate my way through. That's sort of where a lot of people fall off, right? Because they are really close to the end, and you do not want to get that close to the end and then sort of flake out. So I was really good at boundary setting when I graduated with my master's degree is when I got married the first time, and I actually told my fiancé at the time that I was not going to be able to plan our wedding. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:51]: So if he wanted to get married, he could either wait until I got my master's or he could plan it himself. And so he chose B, which was fine with me. I picked the dress and then I showed up. So I think you have to be honest with people in your life that there are a lot of things going on. You have to Have those boundaries. But I also think it's really important to give yourself periods where you just sort of rest and take a break. You can't just plow through everything and assume that you're a robot. It will not happen. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:23]: Your body will literally shut down on you, and you could get really sick. I actually got sick after each of my qualifying exams, like really sick. And so I became much more aware of building for myself a carrot versus carrots stick system, which in the industry basically means something that you like— which is weird because I hate carrots— versus something that you don't like, like the stick, to like, you know, be somewhat punitive. So I would allow myself to enjoy certain things and give myself a break, and then I would get back to work. So I think it's really important to have a support system in your life where people are going to let you know that you're doing well and that you can continue to do but even if no one does say that, I think it's really important for you to understand that for yourself because at the Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:24:15]: end of the day, you're the one doing the work. You definitely are doing the work and it, it will be challenging as you go through and you'll be pushed in many different ways. And there's times in which you may even have points of burnout where you're, you're chugging along and you're working hard and, and you hit that proverbial wall for yourself. Talk to me about burnout for yourself and how did you avoid burnout or recover from it when you felt overwhelmed? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:24:44]: Oh yeah, I definitely experienced burnout. I'm pretty good at managing boundaries, but being able to manage boundaries doesn't inoculate you from having to feel the effects of stress. So I crashed a couple times. I remember at one point during— I'm— the most difficult, well, during my master's degree, I actually had to take a year off from my master's degree because a member of my family had a mental mental health crisis that was incredibly serious, and I was the person that had to manage it, and I simply could not balance everything. So I actually did have to step away. I did come back, but that was very significant because typically master's degrees are 2 years, so that's a long time. And for my doctorate degree, I didn't drop out, but because I had so many things going on, I remember I ended up— I don't want to scare anybody, but I ended up in the the emergency room once. I lost hair. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:25:48]: I would sit and my hands would be shaking like I was on a roller coaster ride. I was deeply stressed. And as much as it was uncomfortable, obviously, what I learned from that was how deeply connected my mental state was to my physical state. And that even if in my mind I could write off sort of dealing with things— I had a very high tolerance for the machinations of life— I really still had to take care of my body. I had to make sure I drank enough water. I had to make sure that I slept. I had to make sure that I tried to nurture myself as much as possible. I, I don't know if it's possible to avoid burnout in any situation that is worth having. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:37]: —right? And so if you think of eustress versus stress, which some have characterized as positive stress, if you get married, you're going to be burnt out. If you have kids, you're going to be burnt out. If you have a dog, you're going to get burnt out. So it makes sense that the things worth having also have an accompanying amount of stress associated with it. I think being kind to yourself and really dedicating yourself towards recovery is the Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:04]: key to get past it. It is hard, and I'm not saying that to scare anyone off from grad school. There are going to be times that are going to be harder than others, but in anything that is worth doing, there will be times that will be harder than others, whether that's education, your work, your family, your friends, you know, no matter what, as you go through life, you know this, and it is definitely going to be the case in grad school as well. Now, I guess Dr. Fields, as you think back to your graduate experience and you think about others that are thinking about graduate school and you think about success and things that they can do to be successful, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:49]: I think take it seriously. You really need to take it seriously. I am not an advocate of check the box degree accumulation. You want to learn. And as I often also say to my students, I had a dear, cherished professor who said to me once that learning is the attachment of meaning to otherwise useless information. And so that has never failed in being true in my life. And so it's really important to understand that you are supposed to learn this information, um, and that that will help you. It, it will not help you if you don't do that. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:28:29]: And there's so many different ways that people try to cut corners that they just try to push past the learning experience. I can tell you as someone who has hired literally thousands of people in my career, people who are differentiated in the work environment are people who are conscientious about what they do. And so if you apply that to your learning, you can only benefit from that. I am an educated person, not just because I have degrees on the wall, but because I learned the material and that, that exercise of learning, it's one of the most valuable things that I have. And so I would encourage people to do that. I know that might sound very basic, but that is pretty clutch. The other thing that I would do is encourage you to be honest with yourself about your capabilities. I think sometimes people take a lot of classes and they really shouldn't take a lot of classes in that particular term because they've got a lot of stuff going on, and it doesn't go well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:29:32]: And you— one could assume that it's not gonna go well if you have like a newborn baby and you decide to take 7 classes. Those things don't tend to mix. So think through what you're capable of doing, and if it takes you a little bit longer, then it takes you a little bit longer. When I was in undergrad, you know, I got my degree in 4 years, my undergrad degree, and that was like the standard. Now I hear that it's 5 to 6 or more, right? I mean, that's for undergrad degree, let alone master's degrees or, or doctoral degrees. And so I think you have to be kind to yourself because being kind to yourself in terms of your true time commitment will make the learning experience an easier, more beneficial one for you as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:30:15]: Well, Dr. Fields, I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your journey today, for sharing your pieces of advice and everything that shared with our listeners today. I know that this journey, like I said, is not a circu— it's a circuitous path. It is not a straight line. And as you said in yours, you definitely had some curves along the way, but you made it and you were successful. And I appreciate you sharing that journey with us and for helping others to be able to maneuver that path for themselves. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:30:45]: And I wish you all the best. Thank you so much. And thank you for having me and go blue. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:30:49]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Navigating Graduate School: Lessons from Steven Foster's Educational Journey
Are you considering taking the next big step in your educational journey? Whether you're just starting to think about graduate school or already knee-deep in your studies, the latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" is packed with insights you won't want to miss. In this episode, Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Steven Foster, Director of Financial Aid at the University of Michigan Flint, to discuss what it truly takes to thrive in graduate school. Their lively conversation weaves through Steven's personal journey—from earning his bachelor's in English Language and Literature, jumping straight into the workforce, and then making the pivotal decision to return for his master's in Educational Leadership at Wayne State University. One major theme is the importance of having a clear motivation for pursuing graduate studies. As Steven Foster shares, his return to school was sparked by an early realization that additional credentials would be crucial for career advancement and personal growth. This combination of upward and social mobility, practical experience, and a passion for educational outreach shaped his path and success (02:16). Discipline, curiosity, and organization are highlighted as the bedrock skills for anyone navigating graduate school. Steven Foster emphasizes that being disciplined and staying organized are essential, especially when juggling work and academic responsibilities (06:45). He notes, "Being disciplined, being curious, being open… those skill sets are extremely important in your journey." Another key takeaway is the role of community and support systems. Graduate school can be overwhelming, and imposter syndrome is a common stumbling block. Steven Foster candidly discusses how self-awareness, open communication, and fostering connections with peers and mentors can provide the reassurance and encouragement needed to push through challenging moments (10:30). Listeners will find practical advice throughout, from evaluating graduate programs and career prospects to leveraging faculty relationships and embracing opportunities for professional and personal development. Steven Foster encourages prospective students to research institutions thoroughly and think beyond just degree requirements—consider how the experience can open doors to consulting, teaching, volunteering, and more (17:03). If you're seeking inspiration, reassurance, or actionable tips for your graduate school journey, this episode is for you. Tune in and let Steven Foster and Dr. Christopher Lewis guide you through the path to graduate school success—because your journey is uniquely yours, and with the right tools and mindset, you can be victorious too! Click here to listen and start your journey to grad school success today! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, we are on a journey together, and I call it a journey because it truly is a journey. You are on a unique journey, something that you are going to be going through, whether you're at the very beginning and just starting to think about graduate school, or maybe you've applied, maybe, maybe you've been accepted. You could be in any of these places, you could even be in graduate school. But throughout all of this, you are on a journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:44]: And through this journey, there are things that you can do to be able to help you to be successful along the way. And that's why this show exists. Every week I love being able to bring you different pieces of advice, different thoughts, different perspectives, and also different people that have gone before you to be able to give you some perspectives on their own experience going through graduate school. This week we got another great guest. Stephen Foster is with us, and Stephen is the Director of Financial Aid at the University of Michigan Flint. And I'm really excited to be able to have him here to tell you about his own experiences going through graduate school. And to welcome him to the show. Stephen, thanks so much for being here. Steven Foster [00:01:24]: Thank you, Kris, for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:25]: I am really excited to be able to have you. And one of the first things that I love doing is turning the clock back in time, and I want to go back a little ways because I know you did your undergraduate work, and after you went through that experience and got that Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature, you went off and got a job. You went off and worked, and you jumped into the world of financial aid. Steven Foster [00:01:49]: I did. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:50]: And you never looked back. But one of One of the things that I want to do is ask you about this point in time, because there was a point in time that you were working, you're out there, but at some point you had this inkling that you needed to go back. You wanted to continue. You had to scratch that itch for going back and getting more education. And I guess bring me back to that point and what made you decide that that was the right time, the right place? Steven Foster [00:02:16]: You know, thank you, Kris, and I'm excited to be here just to share some of my experiences. And I did receive my undergrad from University of Michigan, graduated with my master's in educational leadership from Wayne State University. And what really inspired the additional need for education is I knew that at one point in my career I was going to need it for that upward mobility, that social mobility, and having the credential, right, makes it a little bit easier, right, to give you the practical hands-on experience, to give you the theoretical aspect side, educational leadership research, to give you the technical pieces that you need to be a, a successful administrator and leader. So I knew that early on in my career because I actually started my graduate program and my graduate work about 2 to 3 semesters out from my undergrad after graduating. So I knew, I just knew early on that, hey, I need this credential, I'm going to need this credential along the way to help me to advance. And so I went to work during the day, and as soon as I was done at work during the day, I would go right into classes in the evening. And I guess early on it helped me because I still had some level of discipline as a student from my undergraduate experience. So I think that helped me a little bit along. Steven Foster [00:03:49]: The way in order to help me to, to push through to my master's to completion. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:54]: Now, I know you did your master's degree at Wayne State University and you got a Master of Education in Educational Leadership and Administration, and there are a lot of programs that are in the Master of Ed space and you chose Wayne State. So bring me back to that point. And when you were thinking about looking at, you know, pers— all the different prospective universities, what made you decide on Wayne State University? What made it stand out? And talk to me about that process for yourself. Steven Foster [00:04:23]: Yes. So I was looking at several programs and I really wanted to go into education. I wanted to go back in— I wanted to go in a K-12 setting. So I actually was looking at master's for teacher certification programs and I was looking at the University of Michigan. I also was looking at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. I looked at Michigan State University and ultimately landed at Wayne State University for actually selfish reasons. It was a tremendous benefit called, uh, educational benefit, and it kind of altered my plans from, uh, going into the classroom and really finding my passion in the higher education side of, of education where I could affect change, where I could help students— be that bridge and bridge that gap to students to promote higher education and to promote education from a different lens, um, besides going into the classroom. So that's what kind of detoured me. Steven Foster [00:05:29]: It was actually the benefit of getting my degree paid for, but also I really got a passion for educating students how to think about college affordability, how to think about college finance, and how to plan for college, how to be successful in college and looking at higher ed. From the outreach side of things and being a bridge and being a spokesperson about the many benefits of receiving a higher education degree can bring to students and their families. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:02]: Now, going from undergrad to grad, you said that it had been a few terms out from when you graduated to when you started. And when you go into a graduate program, there definitely is a transition because it's a different way of being taught, a different— level of expectations by faculty members and a different level of expectation on yourself for what you're trying to achieve. So talk to me about those transitions. And as you transitioned into graduate school and through graduate school, what did you have to do to be able to set yourself up for success? And what did you add to— have to do to be able to maintain that success throughout the graduate school journey? Steven Foster [00:06:45]: The biggest thing, or the number one thing that comes to my mind, is being disciplined. Being disciplined, being curious, being, being open. Because when you go undergrad or grad, I think grad is, uh, of course, higher thought processes. It's a lot of reading, it's a lot of theory, it's a lot of hands-on practice. So a combination of all of that, but being disciplined and organized. Those skill sets are extremely important in in your journey, definitely if you're transitioning back into the grad space after you've been out of school a number of years, staying on top of your assignments, staying on top of your reading, asking questions. You know the saying, there's no such thing as a dumb question, right? But having that intellectual curiosity that there are many different paths to ultimately get to where you want to be, but how you actually perceive the world of, of grad school, whatever your discipline is of study. It could be health sciences or education, social work or business, that there is some level of curiosity and exploration in coming to find out where are you the master at? What is your subject matter expertise? What are those things that interest you to where you say, I'm going to be the subject matter expert in this? It just opens your doors for possibilities to so many things. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:12]: You know, as you talk about that, you know, you're working on a master's degree and there's some internal thought that when you are being admitted into a master's program, you are becoming a master of something, which is sometimes a little dodging when you think about it to be called, eh, I'm the master of nothing. I'm a master of none. I guess when you went into that master's degree and as you're going through this coursework and you're seeing yourself in a different way, talk to me about that transition for yourself as an individual and as a professional and how that graduate degree helped you to either refine or redefine who you were at the time and who you were becoming? Steven Foster [00:08:53]: I think for me, and that— I think that's an excellent question. I think that it actually allowed me to refine, but not only refine, it's so many aspects to a master's degree and to graduate education that depending on what class you are taking or depending on what season you are in, in your life and how it benefits you in that moment. So for me, because I was so early on in my career, it allowed me to kind of shape how I wanted to be perceived as a professional. It kind of shaped my modus operandi in order to be an asset and be beneficial to all of the families that I serve and, you know, faculty working with different constituencies in higher education, working— how do you have conversations with Congress versus your faculty? And, you know, dealing with some of the nuances of how do you handle a sensitive student case to a parent that just wants basic information. So it gives you a breadth and a depth in order for you how to be successful, right? And how to apply the knowledge that you acquire. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:00]: Now, every individual, as they're thinking about graduate school, as they're going through graduate school, ends up hitting a point in time where whether it's you're seeing yourself as a master of something or you are just going through that first course where you feel that imposter syndrome and you go through this process of questioning, "Should I be here? Am I good enough?" All of those different thoughts that go through your head. Talk to me about how imposter syndrome impacted you and what you had to do to get through it. Steven Foster [00:10:30]: At points in all of our careers in education, as, as we're matriculating into degree programs, you know, on our jobs and our careers, maybe even in our households, there is always a bit of self-doubt in us. I could have handled that situation better, or how could I have accomplished that in a different manner? So I think that we have imposter syndrome across everything that we do, whether it's a volunteer experience, professional experience, personal experience. But for me, how I really overcame it was through self-awareness. But not also self-awareness, it's really also grasping on to like individuals. So a lot of times you're in classes with the same people. A lot of programs are cohort-based. My program was not necessarily cohort-based, but really having those conversations and building support systems to help you through. Sometimes you have to talk stuff through with a gamut of people. Steven Foster [00:11:33]: That could be your classmate, it could be your spouse, it could be your therapist, it could be your faculty your lead, or, you know, your advisor, or those things. So it's those people that help you along the way to be successful, but to also ground you and reel you back in when you need that reassurance. So my word of advice to people is don't be afraid to talk about the challenges that you are having. If you're in a grad program, or if you're in that space that you feel that imposter syndrome, you probably need to get it out, to express yourself, to make you feel a little bit and tackle it head on so that you don't continue to— some people, you know, beat, beat themselves up, not literally, but from that perspective. But talk to someone because someone else is also in your same shoes. And that's what I did. Latched on to some of my classmates, made sure, you know, we had regular conversations, you know, healthy debate about the work, about the assignments, about, you know, some of the challenges that we were experiencing in order to be successful. And, uh, one of the things is I was also— I was somewhat younger than some of my classmates at the time. Steven Foster [00:12:45]: I'm a little bit older now, but that wasn't the case when I started my master's program. I was in a class with professionals who had been working 20, 30 years at that point, and they were just starting to come back for their credential, right, for their upward mobility. And here I am, this young, spry kid coming in on the scene, and I'm in these rooms with people people who have double and triple the experience that I have, what am— how can I ever bring the value and knowledge of the experiences that, that they have? So it is a— it can be an overwhelming process, but you just have to get in where you fit in is the perfect way for me to put it. You don't have to try to over, um, outdo or outshine. Based on the little experience that I had, I still was able to contribute to the conversation in a meaningful and way. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:40]: Now, as you think back to the beginning, before you even started graduate school, I'm sure you had some conversations with friends, with colleagues, with others that could give you their own perspectives. And if you think back to that very beginning, what's something that you wish that someone had told you, or that you had known prior to starting graduate school that would have helped you to make that transition even better? Steven Foster [00:14:02]: I really do believe that it was just a little bit different for me because I was passionate about education. I was getting— I had hands-on work experience. I was, I was still working and going to school. So it wasn't like I wasn't working and only going to school or went straight through. I was able to apply what I was learning in my actual day-to-day. That made my experience even more successful or more better for me as I was talking to professors and things of that nature. Definitely at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor at the time, you know, and advisors and things of that nature, their thought process was learning experience is, it's an ongoing process, right? That curiosity for exploration and for learning is important. So they, they stress the importance of, if this is the path you want to take, you have to do this, or you have to do that. Steven Foster [00:14:55]: So they were actually my biggest cheerleaders in making sure that I was successful in my on-ramp to my grad program. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:02]: Well, it's always good to have those mentors and those people that help you to maneuver into figure things out along the way. And you also build relationships with faculty along the way as well. Talk to me about those relationships that you were able to build with faculty or with peers inside of your program. And how was that impactful in the experience that you went through? Steven Foster [00:15:26]: My relationship with my faculty advisor was, was tremendous because I was able to meet with them on a regular basis and have thoughtful conversation about what is it that I can do with this credential, what What paths make sense for me from a career perspective? What are the different things that I can do outside of my career? You know, what, what does it mean to go in consulting? I always think that ultimately I wanted to go and be a professor. I have started a PhD a while ago and opportunity came along and I put that on pause, but it's always the, the opportunity for them to share their experiences and based on the skills assets that you have, them to kind of guide you through some of those things. And that's what I'll always appreciate about definitely some of the faculty that I have connected with on a basis as a student, that they are always trying to get the best out of you, whatever that is for you as an individual. It's not, you know, they're not selling anything, they're not selling you any fairy dust and unicorns or anything like that, but they're trying to get the best out of their students. And that was the experience that I had. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:42]: And I guess finally, as you look back on your own experience, you were successful in the journey that you went through. And as you think back, I guess, to the entire experience and you look at where you are today and you think about people that are thinking about going to graduate school for themselves, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Steven Foster [00:17:03]: Some tips is research your institutions. Research your programs, look at the viable career paths that you want to go into, and look at the plan B or look at the— what's the side hustle that I can do from this degree that will produce additional streams of revenue, additional income based on the degree that you do have? Opportunities for consulting, opportunities for part-time or work from home opportunities from whatever the deal degree program is because for me, graduate education, it opens the door even more to more possibilities than your bachelor's degree a lot of times. And that upward mobility and that social mobility is very important for our students that we serve. So you want to make sure that this is something that you're truly passionate about, but that it opens other doors and opportunities for you to get the best well-rounded experiences that you need in order to be successful, maybe in your main career. But there are also branches that shoot off from that main career— speaking engagement, teaching opportunities, professorships, consulting opportunities, volunteer opportunities on boards and different things of that nature in order to help nonprofits and stuff grow depending on whatever your discipline is. So you're volunteer, you're professional. Experience, your community experience, all of that makes you a well-rounded person. And it gives us a personal ethos for us to be change agents in that you are in the world to shed your light and shed your experience in whatever direction that is and works best for you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:45]: Well, Stephen, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. And, you know, I'm going to continue to encourage you now that I know that you started a PhD to keep going. I'm looking— not to stop out, but always keep going, always keep pursuing, and don't, and don't give up. Steven Foster [00:19:01]: Absolutely. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:02]: So that being said, I thank you for your time today, and I wish you all the best. Steven Foster [00:19:06]: Thank you, Dr. Lewis. I appreciate you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:08]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Overcoming Obstacles: Lessons in Resilience from John Ambrose
Are you thinking about going to graduate school, or already on the journey and searching for motivation? The latest episode of Victors in Grad School offers both inspiration and practical advice. Host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with John Ambrose, Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management at the University of Michigan Flint. Through vulnerability and candor, John Ambrose unpacks his non-linear path to academic and professional achievement, and why graduate school was transformative for him. A recurring theme throughout the episode is resilience. As a first-generation student, John Ambrose openly discusses the difficulty of navigating higher education "without the right mentoring and information," sharing a raw moment of feeling "trapped" after changing majors and needing additional years to finish his undergraduate degree (02:23). Despite setbacks and personal loss, including the passing of his father during his freshman year, John Ambrose pressed on, motivated to create meaning and success for himself. The transition into graduate school wasn't easy. John Ambrose recounts taking a pay cut to accept a job that would fund his master's, balancing the demands of work, school, and family – at times, facing weekends packed with study and few breaks (09:41, 22:36). For anyone hesitating to return to school later in life, his advice is honest: "It's not that you can't do it, but what are the adjustments that I need to make?... What is this going to mean for your family?" (21:13). Preparation and honest communication with one's support network are crucial. Another highlight is John Ambrose's perspective change from undergraduate to graduate studies. He describes the graduate experience as "fun," especially the value of discussion-based learning and the satisfaction of intellectual exchange (10:18). He notes that beyond credentials, graduate school is about personal development and acquiring soft skills—listening, confidence, grit, and the ability to articulate your experiences. "[Graduate school] is an opportunity to develop yourself and to provide opportunities for you to become a different type of version of yourself," he reflects (24:29). This episode isn't just for prospective students—it's for anyone seeking to find meaning in growth, overcome setbacks, and make purposeful choices about the next stage in life. Tune in to hear an inspiring journey that proves success isn't always linear—and graduate school can be about so much more than a degree. Listen to the full episode and let John Ambrose's journey empower your own. TRANSCRIPT John Ambrose [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week, we're on a journey together. I say it every week, but it is so true that the— that what you're doing right now as you are preparing to think about— either think about graduate school, apply to graduate school, go through graduate school— it is a journey. And that journey might take you a year to get into graduate school, it might take you 2 years, 3 years, who knows. No matter where you are on this path, there are things that you can do right now to help you to be successful ultimately in the journey that you're on. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:50]: And that's why this show exists. This show exists to help you to find some tools for your toolbox to help you to be able to to find success sooner. We do that many times through opportunities for you to meet others that have gone before you, that have gone to graduate school, have been successful in graduate school, and they can share that experience with you. And today we've got another great guest with us. I'm really excited to be able to have John Ambrose with us. And John is the new Vice Chancellor for Enrollment Management at the University of Michigan Flint. And I'm really excited to have him here to be able to share with you his journey in going through graduate school and how that's led him to here at University of Michigan Flint. John, thanks so much for being here today. John Ambrose [00:01:33]: Dr. Lewis, thank you for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:35]: It is my pleasure. Really excited to have you here today. And I am going to start this interview with an opportunity to go back in time. I know you did your undergraduate work at Western Michigan University and then— yes, go Broncos! We both have that connection that we're both Broncos and I guess I wanna go back in time to that point when you were at Western, and then after Western, you went off, you worked for a while, and at some point, some point in that work experience, you made a choice, you made a decision that you were going to continue your education and continue your education in a completely different area than what you did as an undergraduate student. So bring me back to that point when you were having that inkling in your mind, and what made you decide that that was the right time —to go to graduate school? John Ambrose [00:02:23]: Oh, man. Uh, days in Kalamazoo were an amazing time for me. That was an opportunity where I like to say I, I was reared in Detroit, but I was trained in Kalamazoo. In terms of adulting, as the young people use, uh, that term today, it took me 6 and a half years to get my 4-year degree from Western Michigan, mostly because I changed my major, but I only changed it once. And I was required to almost go back from square one. Uh, very few of the credits that I had earned prior to were allowed in my new major. And so it, it was a difficult decision, but as a first-generation student, then you're doing your best to negotiate and navigate, and all the information you're getting is not necessarily accurate. So I just found myself having to make an adult decision in the moment. John Ambrose [00:03:14]: So I remember very vividly going out and sitting on the curb and crying. And I got myself together after I cried about it. And it was, you know, it was almost like I felt like a sit— like I had just been sentenced to 4 more years of jail. And not that I hated it, but it just— I felt trapped, to be honest, if I'm being honest about the emotions that I felt. But I was like, okay, you're— this is it. I mean, this is what I have to do. And I had gotten myself into that position primarily because a little bit of it was academics, A lot of it was just the lack of mentoring that I had and the lack of sharing and feeling like I was the only one. But those are the types of things that first-generation students will face at moments in their educational journey. John Ambrose [00:03:58]: But stood up, dropped my face off, went to the bathroom, washed it, and came back and signed up and said, okay, let's do it. So I did my 4 years, and at that point I thought, I'm never coming back to college again. But I was so focused on my career that when I got ready to graduate, I don't already done in, in excess of 12 different internships all over the place, trying to really find myself. Everything from internships within my major to legal and social work and outside, you name just, you know, I did just about any job there was to do on the campus and worked in all the buildings, I think, except two by the time I graduated. But it was an opportunity, like I said, to really mature and grow. And eventually I did gain mentors across the campus. And so But it was just a different type of experience and one that I cherished really very dearly and hold close to my heart because I lost my dad my first semester freshman year. And he was a bit of my muse for going to college. John Ambrose [00:05:01]: So when he passed away, I really wasn't sure because I'd never done anything for myself. Uh, everything I did was to please him and to make him happy. And, you know, you, you wanted to get that stamp of approval from your dad or— and your mom. But my dad was larger than life in my eyes at that time. And also it was, it was a bit of learning, learning to want things for myself. So fast forward, I graduate, I work in the printing industry for a few years, actually more than a few, but I changed companies probably about 3 times and each one, uh, more progressively until the last one that was a bit more entrepreneurial. Found myself leaving there after the smaller mom-and-pop shop with the entrepreneurship piece and I started selling life insurance. And I got a call one day to find out if I was interested in joining Marygrove College. John Ambrose [00:05:49]: And so the decision was, after they made me an offer, that I would go and earn my master's degree in education. And so when I got to the point of— I think it was, you got to do 6 months. So after my 6-month probation period in the, the start of the career, I started the program. And so I had my master's degree in education. And the Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary there who ran Marygrove College— and I knew very little about the college when I, I started to work there. But that was the primary reason for going. So I got this wonderful lesson about the history of Detroit, but it was also my first foray into Catholic school education and kind of the mission of the Catholic Church as well as that particular sect for these— by the Sister Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. And I mean, they were a gritty group of sisters and they did not take any, any stuff from any man or any woman for that matter. John Ambrose [00:06:47]: And I mean, just the history of being the— in Detroit and how they became— went from being all-female to co-ed in the '60s. So it was quite the journey. And later to find out that my older sister had actually gotten her degree from there. And then, so there was a lot of connective tissue, but just things I had never really paid attention to. But it was a— and still is today— a beautiful campus. They just don't do college degrees anymore, undergraduate or master's. They are now a K-12 school, actually supported by the University of Michigan Ann Arbor and used— being used as a teaching lab for K-12 education and a part of the Detroit Public School System, community school district system. So they are continuing to educate and provide opportunities and access for Detroiters to education. John Ambrose [00:07:35]: But that's kind of a, a short brief about how I got from my bachelor's degree to my master's degree. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:41]: So talk to me a little bit about going as a first-generation college student, as an undergraduate student. When you go to— when you go to graduate school, you're still a first-generation college student. It's a little bit different. There's different expectations, there's different thoughts and ways in which you have to, have to pivot to be successful in that journey itself, different than what it was in undergrad. And you had gone from undergrad to work and then now transitioning back into school. So talk to me about that transition for yourself. And as you transitioned into graduate school and through graduate school, you were successful, but what did you have to do to set yourself up for success as you transitioned into graduate school? And what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout the entire graduate school experience? John Ambrose [00:08:27]: As I mentioned, I, I did 6.5, so part of the reason, or even the change in the major, had a lot to do with my GPA in undergrad. So I'd gotten myself into trouble, got myself out of trouble while I was there, but my GPA didn't rise to the level of being regularly admitted to graduate school. So when I got there and I ended up on probation my first year, but was quickly taken off of probation after my first semester. So I ended up graduating with a, I think a 3.98 or 5 or something like that with my graduate degree from Marygrove. The process was interesting, Chris, because I, I mean, let's just keeping it honest. I was making less working for Marygrove than I did when I left college. As a newly minted graduate, college graduate, I made more out of college than I was making when I went there, but they were paying for my degree. So it became one of those investment moments, and I was married, and now I have a mortgage, and I've got car notes, and I've got all these bills, and there's not enough money coming in the door for doing the work. John Ambrose [00:09:41]: So it was a tough decision, but my wife said, "Hey, we'll make the sacrifice for 2 years for you to do this if this is what you want to do." So we had one of the two kids at that at that time, and then the second child came during the process of working on my master's degree. But a little bit like I hear some of my friends say about having grandchildren, they said, "If we knew grandchildren would be this much fun, I would have had them first and then done the kids second." And so I would tell you, for me, with a master's degree, if, if I had known that a master's degree was going to be that much fun, I would have done it first rather than doing the bachelor's degree. I'd never really taken discussion-based coursework, and so being in a setting where I allowed to converse and talk about my opinions and my thoughts about how I felt about certain educational aspects and thinking about the history of my K-12 or K-16 journey, it really opened my eyes to the ability and how learning could be different. And so I took my classes on the weekend. They weren't during the week, so they didn't interfere with my 9 to 5. I was given some time off to do my, my studies and homework during the work week. So I was given, I think, 5 hours a week so that I had opportunity to, to work on my studies. But I had as much on my plate during graduate school and maybe more in terms of the pressure. John Ambrose [00:11:06]: But the ability to focus and have support was interesting from my— when I think about the juxtaposition between my undergraduate years and my graduate years of what was on my plate. I had a lot of part-time jobs in undergraduate, and my mom would often tell me my priorities were a little askew and it— It would just grab me by my nerves because I didn't fully understand or contemplate what she was really saying. So it wasn't until later when I was working on my master's that I began to understand what she was saying. It wasn't that I had too much on my plate. It was what I was prioritizing about what was on my plate that made all the difference in the world. And so going back to get my master's degree, I didn't have a goal for— at the time for what it was going to mean. What I had come to understand, and I had learned this in undergraduate, it really doesn't matter to the degree that you hold. What matters is that you find a place in working— in working America where people— where you fit, whatever the work is. John Ambrose [00:12:10]: Um, but having a degree says a lot about who you are, and mostly that's why it exists as a caveat for, "This is the reason that we will hire you." Now, of course, there are disciplines, uh, being a doctor or, you know, a nurse or other things where you've got to have the background and understanding about those things, but there are a lot of things in in jobs and careers that exist, that it helps if you have a degree, but it doesn't matter that you have the very specific degree. And I think it's one of the myths that exists in a lot of people's mindsets about what education is and what it can do for you. But for me, it has opened a, a large variety of doors and opportunities. So when I got ready, I didn't know at the time when I took the job that I was going to— once I got my master's degree, that I was going to transition into higher ed. My intention was to go back to selling life insurance and move up in, in that particular industry. But I knew having an advanced degree of any type was going to be able to help me. And the reason I did the master's in ed with a focus on adult learning was I knew I wanted to manage adults. And so I've always felt that if you can teach, you can lead. John Ambrose [00:13:22]: So understanding education and how it fit into the ethos of the work world. But that's the biggest thing, Ian, sis, no matter what your degree is in, can you articulate how those specific, uh, tenets actually connect to the career that you're focused on or the new thing that you want to do? Can you make the correlation so that when you're interviewing, you have the ability to help the search committee understand how you view that connection? And I've been very successful in being able to do that over the years of taking the full complement of all of the things that I've done and bring those to bear in the places that I've gone. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:02]: Now, as you said, you got a degree with the focus on adult learning, and you said you wanted to work with adults. And over the years, you stayed in higher education and working— you do work with adults, but you also work with many younger individuals as they were transitioning in and through their undergraduate experience. So as you look back and you think about the degree that you received and, and how that has helped you through your experience. If you think back now, would you change— would you choose the same program or path, and why or why not? John Ambrose [00:14:36]: I think I choose the same path in the program. I see the young people as high school seniors or juniors as young adults, and I won't get into the debates about where they are and, and, you know, the development of their frontal cortex and all of that stuff, but their experience and exposure to more adult items has far surpassed the kinds of things that I was exposed to at their age. And so in a lot of ways socially, they're ready to have conversations that they're not really fully developed to have. And so they still struggle a bit, I think, in terms of understanding, but they appreciate being able to wrestle with it themselves if you give them the opportunity to do it. But I wouldn't change any of it. I, I love the path, uh, and how I found higher education. I think it gives me a unique story. And I find the— I mean, I knew I loved higher ed when I got to college, and there were plenty of days that I wanted to quit during my undergraduate, but there was far too much— many other positive things going on. John Ambrose [00:15:39]: And once I got connected to the right mentors, they started to help me see life and navigate life differently. It wasn't that we were talking about my discipline or they were trying to help me understand my career. Options better, but they were helping me navigate life in a way that I, you know, had my father been around, I would've been looking for him, I think, to help me with the navigation for that. So I just came to experience and see higher ed very differently because of that. And it helped me to understand that we're not doing a great job of helping Americans understand what education really is. It's not a transactional effort that leads to these things. It is an opportunity for you to understand that there are greater layers and depths to us as individuals. When you think about— you get up every day in the morning and most of us have a mirror in the bathroom, but very few of us have a mirror that shows us the complete picture of who you are, 360 degrees. John Ambrose [00:16:48]: So even if you have a dressing mirror, you know, maybe you're just checking to make sure if you're that meticulous about your outfit. But again, most people don't. So you kind of get dressed, you check the front, and you go about your merry way. Education gives you an opportunity to think about the full 360-degree and gives you the confidence that you don't have to check the back if the front looks good. But oftentimes we get so consumed in other parts of what we think it is. So we think by having all of those additional mirrors, it's— it's display of vanity or of pride. And not everybody needs to know what I look like from behind and all of those types of things. But it's not about that. John Ambrose [00:17:30]: It really is about you and how you connect with other people and how you want to be seen by other people. And what do you really want to do? Most of us want to help other people, but we have no idea how to— especially once we become adults, we have no idea how to get out of our own way. And then we start thinking about, well, it's going to take me another 8 years. Well, if the good Lord lets you live another 8 years, what are you going to do with the 8 years? Are you going to continue to suffer through where you are, or are you going to decide and make a decision today? I'm going to invest this next 8 years or this next 3 years so that the last 5 years or the next 5 years beyond that can be more in line with what I really want to do, so that you don't have any regrets. But that's what it's about. So even when I talk with young people today about getting their undergraduate degree, it's not about what do you want to do for the rest of your life, it's what do you think you to do for the first 3 years after college, because they're going to change and they're going to have way more jobs than we ever did. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:30]: Now, I guess as you think about the experience that you went through as a graduate student, everybody learns something. You're— you've got your soft skill or your hard skills and your soft skills that you're learning as you go through that experience. What would you say are the specific skills that you felt that you developed most in graduate school? John Ambrose [00:18:49]: Listening. Was probably the biggest one. I also developed my writing skills and became a better writer. But the listening was not just listening to others. It was listening to myself talk. And I talked about confidence a moment ago. I developed a new type of confidence, but I also developed a new ear. And I realized that I liked learning because sometimes you get to, to a certain point in your adult life and everything you've learned up to that point, you figure you've got it figured out. John Ambrose [00:19:18]: And then you have all these little small moments where things get added to that learning. But you don't acknowledge those. And that's the listening part that helped me out along the way because, you know, I, I stubbed my toe, I'd done okay, I was still continuing to do okay. And I felt like this was really, you know, it, but, but I had not made the decision, as I said, consciously that I was going to stay in higher ed. And so as I began to listen to the things that were happening around me, I knew, but I knew that I was going to stay in higher ed. It before I actually started my graduate level courses. So I knew that having a master's degree was going to do more for me in higher education than it was going to do for me in corporate America. So it's not that it wasn't going to help me, but I knew having this Master of Education, having made the decision to stay in higher education before I started my coursework and being admitted, was going to matter. John Ambrose [00:20:12]: So I learned those things about myself. I learned that I have more grit than I thought I did. I was prepared to make some sacrifices, but I had no idea the full level of sacrifices I was going to have to make as a dad, as a husband, as a, as an employee. I had to address a lot of things going through the process. I had to deal with the shame from my past, you know, not doing well academically in my undergraduate. I had to relive that, but I had to own it, and I had to— I wasn't prepared to own it. I, I mean, I did it in the, in the moment, and I knew what it was, but I just thought they were going to admit me or deny me. I didn't know probation was an option. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:49]: I really appreciate you sharing that, and I Jazz, going back to when you first started your graduate program, what's one thing that you wish that someone would have told you about graduate school before you had started? John Ambrose [00:21:02]: I wish they would have talked to me more about the format of the classes and gotten me more excited about, like I said, discussion-based classes and the format. It might have helped me do a search or, or consider things differently. I think it would have also helped to even talk about, from an onboarding standpoint, It's great to give me all of the software applications that I'm going to need, and you're going to need a laptop, and you're going to need all these things, but it would have been helpful, I think, to really talk about the sacrifices that your family's going to have to make, that I'm going to have to make. Depending on the kind of reader you are— and when I say kind of reader, I mean at what speed do you read? You know, I didn't really learn to skim read until my senior year in college, but the kind of reader I needed to be for graduate-level work was completely different. So I think there are some nuance pieces there, especially for folks who are— who might have a degree, may have been out of undergraduate for quite a while, and are thinking now they want to get back into it. You know, what does it really take? It's not that you can't do it, but what are the adjustments that I need to make? What are some things that I can do to prepare, to get ready? So I, I think there's a different kind of preparation or preparatory stages that we can help adults prepare themselves to get mentally ready for what it looks like and to even talk about what is this going to mean for your family? What are the kind of things that you need to negotiate with them? Like, my wife telling me she was going to support me, man, that's wonderful, and it, it means a lot, but she didn't have any idea about the kinds of sacrifices she was gonna need to make. I'm pretty sure she thought, oh, you know, it was like— but every weekend for 2 years, I was absorbed either in work or in school, so there was no, hey, let's go to the movies, or can we take the baby to the zoo, or can we go to the park or do something like that. So I very, very, very few days off from being a student. John Ambrose [00:22:59]: And that 5 hours a week, while it was great to get from the employer, it wasn't enough. You need a lot more than that. So on the weekends when I wasn't in class, I spent a lot of time working study groups. So working with my peers and being there. But when you finish— and it's 2 years, it's not forever— and that's the commitment. So that part I was clear about. All of the work in between, the mental adjustments, then the micro adjustments, So the macro, you can kind of figure out. It's the micro adjustments. John Ambrose [00:23:30]: What, you know, what are the kind of skill sets and things again? What are the things I could work on to be a little better at? And what does it mean? Like, have you ever had discussion-based classes? Like, we only do that now, I think, for online classes. Like, hey, have you ever had an online class? And I did my first online classes in grad school, and I had, I think, one or two. And man, that was a huge change. You realize all your academic experiences have been in the classroom.— with other people and being able to adjust and get feedback and have those moments. But when you're doing coursework online for the first time, it can be very different. There are definitely some adjustments that need to be made. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:24:08]: You definitely do. Uh, as we finish up today, in thinking about success, as you look back at your graduate education and you think about students that are thinking about maybe going back, whether it be in education, business, medicine, whatever it may be, what are some tips that you might offer other considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? John Ambrose [00:24:29]: Don't look at the degree as an opportunity to increase your income. Look at it as an opportunity to develop yourself and to provide opportunities for you to become a different type of version of yourself. If you're just looking to add a degree 'cause it's gonna help improve your income, I suppose that's okay. But I don't think that that's going to be enough to satisfy you, especially when things may get harder. I've got a mentee who every time professionally he hits a ceiling, if you will, and he wants to break through the glass ceiling, he finds a way to go and get another degree. So he just got a law degree from Yale. But prior to that, he's got, I think, 3 other master's degrees prior to going to get his law degree from Yale. But he kept hitting a ceiling and was like, I need more education. John Ambrose [00:25:22]: So he, he— go sacrifice, go find the right hammer to break through the ceiling, get through. Not— there are a lot of other ways to do that. I've got a different mentee and she negotiates. She didn't necessarily— she went and got her graduate degree after successfully negotiating career changes 3 or 4 times. And when I asked her, I was like, so why did you finally go get it now? She was like, I just really wanted to know more about this particular subject because she'd had enough opportunities where she was still able to navigate successfully without the information and do it, but she decided because she wanted it for herself. And that's the biggest thing I think when you think about graduate-level work is I would encourage you to want it for yourself more than, again, just looking to enhance your paychecks. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:07]: Well, John, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your story with us today. I really appreciate that, and I truly wish you all the best. John Ambrose [00:26:16]: Thanks, Chris. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:26:17]: The University of Michigan-Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in —your education. Whether you're looking for in-person or online learning options, the University of Michigan-Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
How to Ensure Your Graduate School Application Tells a Clear Story About You (and Your Goals)
If you're applying to graduate school, you've probably heard this advice before: "Make your application stand out." And if you're like most applicants, your first thought might be: Okay… but how? Because when you look at what a graduate application requires—your personal statement, your resume, your recommendations, your writing sample, maybe even an interview—it can start to feel like a big pile of documents that don't automatically "connect." You may even be thinking: "How do I pull all of this together?" "How do I make sure I'm not just listing accomplishments?" "How do I explain my journey without oversharing?" "What if my path hasn't been perfectly linear?" Let me reassure you right from the start: A clear narrative doesn't require a perfect background. It requires intentional storytelling. And the best graduate applications don't just show that you can do graduate-level work… They show who you are, what shaped you, what matters to you, and what you want to build next. Today, I'm going to walk you through exactly how to do that. Why narrative matters in a graduate school application Admissions committees read a lot of applications. And I mean a LOT. Many applicants have: strong GPAs relevant work experience volunteer involvement leadership roles certifications awards So what makes one applicant memorable over another? Often, it's this: Clarity. A strong applicant helps the committee quickly answer three questions: Who is this person? Why graduate school—and why now? Where are they going, and how will this program help them get there? If your application clearly answers those three questions, your narrative will shine—even if you don't have the "perfect" resume. A key mindset shift: you're not just applying—you're introducing yourself Here's something I tell students all the time: Your application is not a transaction. It's a story. It's not: "Here are my documents. Please accept me." It's: "Here's who I am. Here's what I care about. Here's how I've prepared. Here's where I want to go. And here's why your program is the bridge between my present and my future." When you approach your graduate school application like a narrative, everything becomes easier to organize and write—especially your personal statement. Step 1: Find your "through line" (the story that connects everything) The biggest reason applications feel scattered is because applicants try to include everything. But you don't need to include everything. You need to include what supports your through line. A through line is a simple idea that connects your experiences like a string connecting beads. It might be: a passion (equity in education, mental health advocacy, community-based research) a professional goal (becoming a clinician, moving into leadership, transitioning careers) a lived experience that shaped your direction a problem you want to solve Ask yourself: "What's the theme that runs through my experiences?" And if you're thinking, I don't have a theme—I've done all kinds of things… That's okay. Most people have. Your through line doesn't have to be obvious at first. It often sounds like: "I've always been drawn to helping people make sense of complex systems." "I want to bridge the gap between access and opportunity." "I'm motivated by the belief that small interventions can create big outcomes." "I keep finding myself working at the intersection of people and problem-solving." Your job is to identify what has consistently pulled you forward. Step 2: Use the "Past → Present → Future" structure This is one of the simplest and strongest storytelling frameworks for graduate admissions. It works in personal statements. It works in interviews. It works in letters of intent. Here it is: Past: What shaped you? What experiences, moments, or observations sparked your interest? Present: What are you doing now? What have you learned, built, studied, or contributed that shows readiness? Future: Where are you going? What goals do you have—and how does this program help you reach them? If your application materials align with this structure, the admissions committee will feel confident recommending you. Step 3: Turn your experiences into meaning—not just a list Here's a common mistake: Applicants list experiences like they're writing a résumé in paragraph form. Example: "I completed a degree in psychology. I worked as a research assistant. I volunteered with a nonprofit. I also completed training in crisis intervention." That's not bad—but it's incomplete. What's missing? Meaning. Instead, you want to show what your experiences taught you and how they shaped your goals. Try this approach: What did I do? What did I learn? How did it shape what I want next? Example upgrade: "Through my work as a research assistant studying youth anxiety, I saw how often early intervention is limited by access and stigma. That experience pushed me toward crisis intervention training and strengthened my commitment to pursuing clinical practice focused on adolescents." See the difference? Graduate programs don't just want to know what you've done. They want to know what you've become because of it. Step 4: Be specific about your goals (without boxing yourself in) Another common challenge: applicants worry they have to have everything figured out. Let me say this clearly: You do not need to have a 10-year plan mapped out. But you do need to show that your goals are thoughtful, realistic, and connected to the program. Weak goal: "I want to advance my career and make a difference." Strong goal: "I want to develop the clinical assessment and intervention skills needed to support adolescents navigating anxiety and trauma, with the long-term goal of working in community mental health settings." Strong goal (leadership): "I want to move into higher education leadership roles focused on student success initiatives, using data-informed advising strategies to close equity gaps in persistence and completion." Specific doesn't mean rigid. Specific means you've done the work to understand your direction. Step 5: Connect your goals directly to the program you're applying to This is where applications rise or fall. Admissions committees can immediately tell the difference between: an application copied and pasted for multiple schools and an application written with intention for their program The key is to connect your story to their resources. Look at: curriculum concentrations internship/clinical placements research labs faculty expertise student organizations capstone projects community partnerships Then, write sentences like: "The emphasis on ___ aligns with my interest in ___." "I'm particularly drawn to the course ___ because it supports my goal of ___." "I'm excited by the opportunity to work with faculty whose research includes ___." This is not flattery. This is alignment. Step 6: Make sure every part of your application supports the same narrative Here's the secret that many applicants don't realize: Admissions committees aren't only reading your personal statement. They're reading your whole application to see if it tells one cohesive story. Your application should "agree" with itself: Your resume should support what you claim in your personal statement Your recommendations should reinforce your strengths and readiness Your writing sample should match your academic potential Your goals should match the program you selected You don't want contradictions like: personal statement says you want research, but resume shows no research involvement goals say "clinical practice," but nothing shows people-facing experience statement says you're passionate about X but never explains where it came from You want the committee to feel: "Yes. This makes sense. This applicant is ready." Step 7: Use a "signature sentence" to make your narrative memorable Want a simple way to stand out? Create one sentence that captures your story. Something like: "I'm pursuing graduate study to bridge mental health support and community access for youth." "My goal is to develop the leadership and data skills needed to build equitable student success systems." "I'm committed to using evidence-based practice to improve outcomes for underserved populations." Then weave that idea throughout your application materials. It becomes your anchor. Your north star. And it makes your narrative easy to remember. A quick checklist: Does your application tell a clear story? Before you submit, ask yourself: Can someone summarize my story in 2–3 sentences after reading my materials? Do my experiences clearly connect to my goals? Does my application explain why graduate school now? Did I clearly explain why this program is the right fit? Does my tone sound confident, grounded, and genuine? If yes, you're in an excellent position. One final encouragement If you're worried that your story isn't impressive enough, I want you to hear this: Graduate admissions committees aren't looking for perfect people. They're looking for: purpose readiness alignment growth potential And the clearest narrative isn't built from having the most impressive resume. It's built from knowing: who you are, what matters to you, and what you're building toward. And if you can communicate that clearly? You will stand out. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited that you're back again this week. And this week is another solo episode. I'm going to talk to you about another question that has been submitted. And this week we're going to be talking about how you can ensure that your graduate school application tells a clear story about you and your goals. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:36]: If you're applying to graduate school, you've probably heard this advice before. Make your application stand out. And if you're like most applicants, your first thought might be okay. But how? Anyway? Because when you look at what a graduate application requires, your personal statement, your resume, your recommendations, your writing sample, maybe even an interview, it can start to feel like a big pile of documents that don't automatically connect. May even be thinking, how do I pull all of this together? How do I make sure I'm not just listening accomplishments? How do I explain my journey without oversharing? And what if my path hasn't been perfectly linear? Well, let me reassure you right from the start, a clear narrative doesn't require a perfect background. It requires intentional storytelling. And the best graduate applications don't just show that you can do graduate level work. They show who you are, what shaped you, what matters to you, and what you want to build next. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:40]: Today I'm going to walk you through exactly how to do that. So why does narrative matter in a graduate school application? Well, admission committees read a lot of applications, especially at competitive institutions. And I mean a lot of applications. Many Applicants have strong GPAs, relevant work experience, volunteer involvement, leadership roles, certifications, awards. So what makes one one applicant memorable over another? Often it's this clarity. A strong applicant helps the committee quickly answer three questions. First, who is this person? Second, why graduate school and why now? And third, where are they going and how will this program help them get there? If your application clearly answers those three questions, your narrative will shine even if you don't have the perfect resume. Now, a key mindset shift that you're probably not just applying. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:36]: Here's a key mindset shift. You're not just applying. You're introducing yourself. Here's something I tell students all the time. Your application is not a transaction. It's a story. It's not, here are my documents. Please accept me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:50]: It's here's who I am. Here's what I care about. Here's how I've prepared, here's where I want to go, and here's why. Your program is the bridge between my present and my future. When you approach your graduate school application like a narrative, everything becomes easier to organize and write, especially your personal statement. So step one with this is to find your through line. It's that story that connects everything you see. The biggest reason applications feel scattered is because applicants try to include everything. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:25]: But you don't need to include everything. You need to include what supports your through line. A through line is a simple idea that connects your experiences, like a string connecting beads. It might be a passion, such as equity in education, mental health advocacy, community based research, or a professional goal. Becoming a clinician, moving into leadership, transitioning careers, or a lived experience that shaped your direction or a problem that you want to solve. So ask yourself, what's a theme that runs through my experiences? And if you're thinking, I don't have a theme, I've done all kinds of things. That's okay, most people have. Your through line doesn't have to be obvious at first. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:12]: It often sounds like I've always been drawn to helping people make sense of complex systems, or I want to bridge the gap across access and opportunity. Or I'm motivated by my belief that small interventions can create big outcomes. Or even I keep finding myself working at the intersection of people and problem solving. Your job is to identify what has consistently pulled you forward. The second part of this is to use the past, present, and future structure. This is one of the simplest and strongest storytelling frameworks in for graduate admissions. It works in personal statements. It works in interviews. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:55]: It works in letters of intent. And here it is. So, the past. What shaped you? What experiences, moments, or observations sparked your interest? The present. What are you doing now? What have you learned, built, studied, or contributed? That shows readiness and the future. Where are you going? What goals do you have, and how does this program help you reach them? If your application materials align with this structure, the admission committee will feel confident recommending you. Third step turn your experiences into meaning and not just a list. Here's a common mistake. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:33]: Applicants list experiences like they're writing a resume in paragraph form. For example, I completed a degree in psychology. I worked as a research assistant. I volunteered with a nonprofit. I also completed training in crisis intervention. It's not bad, but it's incomplete. Well, what's missing? The meaning. Instead, you want to show what your experience taught you and how that shaped your goals. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:59]: So try this approach. What did I do? What did I learn and how did it shape what I want next? So using that past example that I just said to you instead, what if it reads through my work as a research assistant studying youth anxiety, I saw how early intervention is limited by access and stigma. That experience pushed me toward crisis intervention training and strengthened my commitment to pursuing clinical practice focused on adolescence. Do you see the difference? Graduate programs don't just want to know what you've done, they want to know what you've become because of it. The fourth step Be specific about your goals without boxing yourself in. Another common challenge Applicants worry. No, another common challenge that we tend to see is that applicants worry they have to have everything figured out. Let me say this clearly. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:54]: Let me say this clearly. You do not need to have a 10 year plan mapped out, but you do need to show that your goals are thoughtful, realistic and connected to the program. So here's an example of a weak goal. I want to advance my career and make a difference. Now, a strong goal would be I want to develop the clinical assessment and intervention skills needed to support adolescents navigating anxiety and trauma with the long term goal of working in community mental health settings. Another example, another strong example that would that might give you some sense might be for someone that wants to do something in higher education leadership. If that's the case, you could say I want to move into higher education leadership roles focused on student success initiatives using data informed formed advising strategies to close equity gaps in persistence and completion. Specific doesn't mean rigid. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:49]: Specific means you've done the work to understand your direction. Step 5 Connect your goals directly to the program you're applying to. This is where applications rise or fall. Admission committees can immediately tell the difference between an application copied and pasted for multiple schools and an application written with intention for their program. The key is to connect your story to their resources. So as you're doing that, you want to take some time to look at curriculum concentrations, internship and clinical placements, research labs, faculty expertise, student organizations, capstone projects, and community partnerships. And then write sentences like the emphasis on aligns with my interest in blank or I'm particularly drawn to the course and you add it in because it supports my goal of whatever that is. Or even I'm excited about the opportunity to work with faculty whose research includes and then you add that in as well. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:51]: This is not flattery, this is alignment. Step 6 Make sure every part of your application supports the same narrative. Here's the secret that many applicants don't realize. Admission committees aren't only reading your personal statement they're reading your whole application to see if it tells one cohesive story. Your application should agree with itself. Your resume should support what you claim in your personal statement, your recommendation should reinforce your strengths and readiness, your writing samples should match your academic potential, and your goals should match the program you selected. You don't want contradictions, such as a personal statement that says that you want research, but your resume shows no research involvement or goals that say you want to be involved in clinical practice, but nothing shows people facing experiences, or a statement that says that you're passionate about this, but you never explain where that came from. You want the committee to feel yes, this makes sense and this applicant is ready. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:52]: And the final step is to use a signature sentence to make your narrative memorable. If you want a simple way to stand out, create one sentence that captures your story. For example, I'm pursuing graduate study to bridge mental health support and and community access for youth. Or my goal is to develop the leadership and data skills needed to build equitable student success systems. Or even I'm committed to using evidence based practice to improve outcomes for underserved populations. Then you can weave that idea throughout your application materials. It becomes your anchor, your North Star, and it makes your narrative easy to remember. So as we finish up today, a couple of things to remember does your application tell a clear story? Before you submit your application, ask yourself these questions. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:41]: Can someone summarize your story in two to three sentences after reading your materials? Does your experiences do your experiences clearly connect to your goals? Does your application explain why graduate school now? Did you clearly explain why this program is the right fit? And does your tone sound confident, grounded, and genuine? If yes, you're in an excellent position. So if you're worried that your story isn't impressive isn't impressive enough, I I want you to hear this. Graduate admission committees aren't looking for perfect people. They're looking for purpose, readiness, alignment, growth, and potential. And the clearest narrative isn't built from having the most impressive resume. It's built from knowing who you are, what matters to you, and what you're building toward. And if you can communicate that clearly, you will definitely stand out. The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:39]: If you are interested in continuing your education, whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Finding Purpose and Community: Dr. Anne Jonas on the Grad School Journey
Are you considering graduate school but not quite sure if it's the right step? Or maybe you're simply curious how others have navigated the transition from undergraduate life or the workforce into advanced study. The latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" is a must-listen for anyone embarking on or contemplating this journey. Host Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint, sits down with Dr. Anne Jonas, assistant professor in human-centered design and human-computer interactions, to unravel the twists and turns of her academic journey. Their conversation is packed with practical wisdom, honest reflections, and encouragement for prospective and current grad students alike. Key Takeaways from the Conversation One of the key themes that emerges from this episode is the importance of intentionality. Dr. Anne Jonas didn't go straight from college to graduate school. Instead, she gained valuable experience in the nonprofit sector, which helped her identify why she wanted to return for further study and what she hoped to achieve. She encourages prospective students to "really know why you're going to graduate school"—not just to continue the routine of education, but because you have a true purpose and passion to pursue. Another significant focus of the discussion is finding the right fit. Dr. Anne Jonas shares how she evaluated potential programs based on faculty interests, curriculum, and the kind of research being done. She emphasizes the value of looking for communities—both academic and personal—that will support you, reminding listeners that "no one person can provide all the support and mentorship" you'll need. The episode also tackles the challenges of transitioning back into academia, particularly the self-management and independence required at the graduate level. Dr. Anne Jonas describes how she learned to balance work, study, and life, and the critical role her supportive community played in her success. Why Listen? Whether you're worried about finances, choosing between programs, or simply need reassurance that there's no single path to grad school success, this episode offers grounded, relatable advice. It's a reminder that with intentional choices, strong support networks, and flexibility, your grad school journey can be deeply rewarding. Tune into this episode of "Victors in Grad School" for a conversation that just might help you find your own path forward. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. Every week we are on a journey together. And I know I say that every week, but it really is true. The journey that you are on as a graduate student is truly that it is a journey. It is not always going to be a linear path. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:32]: There are going to be sometimes some circuitous routes to get you to where you want to be and to get you to being able to meet the goals that you have set for yourself. And this podcast is here to help you on that journey every week. I love being able to introduce you to different people with different experiences that can share their own experiences in going through graduate school to help you find success sooner. This week we've got another great guest. Dr. Ann Jonas is with us today, and Ann is a faculty member here at the University of Michigan, Flint. She's an assistant professor and working in human centered design and human computer interactions. And I'm really excited to be able to learn more about her as well as more about her own experience in going through graduate school and all of this that will help you in your own journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:26]: Anne, thanks so much for joining us today. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:01:27]: Of course. Thanks for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:29]: It is my pleasure having you here today. And I always start these opportunities really turning the clock back in time. And what I would love to do is I want to go back in time, back to your days at Brown University, or maybe a little bit after Brown University, because I know you did your undergraduate work at Brown University. And then at some point after going out working, doing research, you know, working at a number of different places, you made a choice, you made a decision, and there was a point in time where you said, said it's time and I'm ready to move to the next phase of my education. Bring me back to that point. And what made you decide that graduate school was the right time? What that graduate school was the. Was that it was the right time for you to go to graduate school. And that led you forward. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:02:16]: Sure. So I will say, when I was in college, I didn't really, even though I had many wonderful teachers who were graduate students, I didn't have a clear sense that graduate school was an option outside of kind of the professionalized paths of pre law, medical school, et cetera. And so I didn't really see that as something that I would do. And so I went out and worked in nonprofits for quite some time. And I think in that process I. I knew some people who went to graduate school and so I learned a little bit more about it, but I never really was ready to take that step. Early on, I think I was concerned about kind of job security and job availability and cost even. I had learned that many PhD programs and some master's programs provide funding. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:03:07]: I still wanted to make sure that it was something that was going to be financially viable choice for me. And so it was really important to me to kind of get some work experience under my belt before I went to graduate school and to really know like, why I was going to graduate school and not just kind of rely on that as like someone who'd always been at school and always done well at school. I wanted to kind of push myself to do something else and to only go to graduate school if it really, really made sense with kind of what I wanted for my future. So I was very happy in non profits for quite some time. And then I guess about four or five years after I graduated from college, I worked the Barnard center for Research on Women, Barnard College in New York. And being there, a big part of my job was bringing academics to speak at the college and organizing different events, as well as kind of facilitating communication and other kind of programming between scholars and practitioners, artists in all different sorts of fields. And so I was really at that time being exposed to all of these wonderful people doing all of these amazing things, many of whom had taken the graduate school path. And because I was working at a university, I was also lucky enough in combination with some of my prior experiences, to be able to take graduate classes at the Teachers College of New York at Columbia University, because Barnard and Teachers College and Columbia are all part of one university. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:04:37]: And so once I started doing that, then I really was like, okay, there's something really interesting to me here. I had always been interested in the Internet, particularly the social side of the Internet. I had done some classes in what we call modern culture and media when I was in college, but more from that kind of media studies humanities perspective. And take the classes at Teachers College really allowed me to get a little bit more of the social sciences perspective and really realize, okay, this is an area that I would be interested in doing research on. And that was the point where I was like, okay, I think I have a reason to go to graduate school. There's something that I would like to study. I have enough work experience that I feel comfortable that if I come out of graduate school and I'm not taking an academic path that I can continue the kind of work that I had been doing. And so that was when I kind of decided to set about looking into different programs and taking the leap of applying to graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:33]: So let's continue unpacking that because you spent many years is on the east coast and I know where you ended up. You ended up out on the west coast at the University of California, Berkeley. But I guess talk to me about that. You said you started a process of trying to identify where you might want it to be and you ended up at the far other side of the country. So talk to me about that decision making process for yourself and what ultimately led you to UC Berkeley. And what was it about that that really stood out and made you decide that that was the right fit for you? Dr. Anne Jonas [00:06:06]: Yeah, I think my top priority in looking into graduate school programs were first the program, what am I going to be expected to do and is that going to align with kind of the goals that I have for what I want to research and kind of why I want to go to graduate school. And then there were some just like practical limitations. I'm very unfortunately monolingual. I don't speak another language. Many programs require that you have proficiency or fluency in another language. Similarly with like computer programming, I didn't have those skills. And so I was looking for programs that matched both the skills that I had and where I could do the kind of work that I wanted to do. And so that was important to me. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:06:46]: But I think the thing that was most important to me was looking into the faculty in different programs and saying, okay, who's doing the kind of research that I want to do in the areas that I want to do it and are they accepting new students? And then is the program in alignment? So those were kind of the big things for me is like the faculty and then the program structure. I looked all over the country and a little bit outside the country, you know, and just kind of did my research on the programs, on the people. I think I ended up applying to like eight PhD programs, something like that. I loved being in New York and love. But I didn't find a program in New York that felt like it was the right fit for me. So I didn't end up applying to any there that I can recall. So yeah, and with Berkeley in particular, I had a friend who was in that program. So I had been exposed to it and there was a scholar that I really admired, whose work I'd followed for, for a long time, who had graduated from that program. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:07:44]: And so that was familiar to me in those ways. Yeah. And I think that was kind of most of how I went about it more generally. And I was deciding between maybe we'll get to this. But for me, I applied to a mixture of programs in education departments, American Studies department, Anthropology department, and then Schools of Information, which is where I ended up, which is a more interdisciplinary program. But I was kind of looking, I knew I wanted to do some sort of more interdisciplinary research, but those were kind of the options that I was considering to take kind of a different angle on things. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:20]: Let's definitely talk about that. Because when you're looking at different programs, some people might automatically assume they're all going to be in the same type of college with the same type of requirements, with the same type of curriculum. And as you said, your specific discipline definitely is not. It can be found in different areas with different expectations. So talk to me about that and what you had to really look at to figure out for yourself what was going to be that best fit for you. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:08:46]: Yeah. So I think again, I would look at program structure, so I looked at what kind of courses are required, and then I would look at like, what kind of research are students and faculty putting out, what kind of venues are they publishing in, and again, what kind of skills are required either beforehand or once you're there. And I think that that curriculum piece was really important for me. I think like, interdisciplinarity is like very attractive to a lot of people because there's just so much out there. And it's really exciting to be able to pull from different areas. But I always say like, one of the, the trade offs that you have to consider is I think in a, a disciplinary program you really are given a foundation, you know, you're disciplined into a particular subset of knowledge and kind of given a very clear framework in which you're interacting and which you're contributing to. With interdisciplinary programs and research, you're much more going to be for putting that together and figuring out like, what kind of intervention are you making, who are you speaking to, what are you building on, and how are you going to hold yourself accountable to a different research community. So I think there's kind of a trade off of like depth and breadth there. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:10:01]: And then whichever I knew, whichever way I went, I was going to need to like supplement the other side. So if I went into a kind of more traditional disciplinary program like anthropology, then I knew I would have to make an effort to kind of bring in other fields and connect with work outside of that. And I knew if I went into a more interdisciplinary program, then I was going to have to be responsible for kind of finding out what kind of foundation I wanted to build upon for, for my research. So it was just kind of thinking about, about those trade offs. And I think ultimately I really decided that who I wanted to be in conversation with were people who were in kind of the tech world broadly. And that to me meant people coming at it from a technical perspective of computer science, as well as an arts and design perspective and a law and policy perspective. And then people like me who are more grounded in kind of social science research. But I wanted to be engaging with people from all of those different aspects. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:11:07]: And looking at some of the other programs, I think I was, you know, I thought they were really great, really exciting. But I realized I didn't want to spend two semesters learning about like the foundational literature of anthropology. I wanted instead to kind of focus, focus more on that cross disciplinary conversation. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:24]: Now for every student there is a transition that they go through. When they go from being an undergraduate student, they transition potentially into the workforce like you did. They then going from the workforce back into school is another transition. But even going from undergraduate in the way that you're educated there to how you're educated in a PhD program is also a transition. So talk to me about that transition for you. And as you think back to your graduate school education, what did you have to do as you transitioned into program and what did you have to do throughout the program to be able to find success? Dr. Anne Jonas [00:11:58]: I mean, I think one of the differences for me between to some extent at least between working outside of academia and then going back to school was I think I tried pretty hard when I was working outside of academia to kind of keep work at work. Like I kept very particular hours and unless there was a big project or something like that, at the end of the day I would go home and not really have to worry about work. I think with going back to school, being back in a PhD program, I had to adjust that somewhat. And everyone's different, like you said, with their schedules and their kind of routines and ways of doing things. But it's very much there will always be more work to be done. And so kind of figuring out how to prioritize that work and maybe be take advantage of the flexibility that I think a grad school schedule can offer in terms of meeting up with people, going to Events, but then also doing reading or writing into the night, things like that. I think I had to kind of of recalibrate myself for that, for that situation. I mean, I think that project management, I think especially again being in an interdisciplinary program really required a lot of self management in terms of figuring out prioritization and projects and kind of the other thing about particularly the kind of graduate school program that I went to is it's very independent. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:13:21]: So really setting my course, you know, with feedback from advisors and, and from peers. But setting a course and kind of stick sticking to it and finding the path required a lot of being proactive and figuring things out kind of on my own. And so I think that was really helpful for me throughout the process once I kind of got the hang of it, always still learning. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:42]: As you think back to your graduate education, what's something that you wish that someone would have told you before you had started that would have helped you along the way? Dr. Anne Jonas [00:13:52]: I think that I got pretty good advice from people. So I think that, that things that I was told that I try to share with others is to like be very cognizant of like just logistically practically of the financial trade offs and decisions and what that's going to mean in your life and like for your family, your goals, your stability. I think having that match with faculty is really essential and really important in terms of like finding people that you align with, kind of in terms of what work you want to do, what style of work you want to do. And then I think the other thing that I really tell people that was communicated to me is that PhD programs in particular are really about research. And so unless that is like the primary thing that you want to do, then a PhD might not be the right answer. I think a lot, there are a lot of people out there who really enjoy learning and you know, so they think, oh well, maybe graduate school or a PhD in particular is the, the way to go. And I think there's so many different ways to kind of go about pursuing a love of learning. And one just needs to be aware that with a PhD in particular, there is really that research component that is at the forefront. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:11]: Every graduate student has to find that balance for themselves, that balance of school, work, family, other commitments. And sometimes that can be difficult because you're trying to figure out that, that perfect spot for yourself, that sweet spot for yourself. So how did you find balance for yourself in looking at all of those different responsibilities? And what are some things either that you put in place or things that helped you to find success in balancing things while going through graduate school. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:15:43]: I think that it was always really important for me to have a support system and kind of a community both within and outside of graduate school. And I know people who really wanted to keep those worlds separate. And I think that's a totally valid approach. Your graduate school does not need to be your social community. For me, it often was. And for me that was really wonderful and supportive that I was able to have people who understood that wild kind of world of academia and were in a similar position. I was lucky in that there were only two other people in my cohort in my year in my graduate program. And we were all kind of doing pretty different things, but also had some overarching overlapping interests so that we were really able to like, understand and respect and connect on each other's work, but also that we were working on different enough things. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:16:39]: And I also think just our personalities, that it never felt like competitive because I think that can be something that's really hard for some people during the graduate school process. And so, yeah, for me, one of the best parts of graduate school was my peers. I was very close to the other students in my graduate program and in the master's program that was attached to the same department that I was in. And that was, I think, just a huge benefit to me in getting through graduate school both like socially and professionally. But again, I don't think it needs to be that way. I think it's different for everybody. It was also useful certainly to have people in my life who were outside of that world so that I wasn't only kind of tunnel vision on that one perspective. And I also, I had some friends who, you know, I started running, I would run with my friends. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:17:28]: That was, you know, a very important practice practice for me and kind of promoting like my overall wellness like while being in graduate school. I think it's nice, it's good to like have those other pieces in your life, whatever it is, for one, that helps have a more holistic experience because it certainly can feel all consuming if you let it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:48]: And talk to me about the research process for yourself because not everybody is going to do a research oriented degree, but a PhD definitely is. So talk to me about, about the research process yourself and how you sustained yourself through that process because especially in a PhD program, it can be a long haul and having to keep moving forward to meet those milestones. So talk to me about that and what you had to do to be able to set yourself up to being able to finish in the End it. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:18:17]: Is so different for everyone. You know, I mean, I think the, the research process, but for me, I was in a model that was again, much more independent. So I really had to figure out, like, is this project going to look like. And that changed very much just based on, honestly, like, logistics and practicality access, the sort of projects that I thought I was going to do early on in my PhD, I couldn't find a good place to do them. And so I had to pivot and kind of figure out other ways of going about it, which I think eventually was for the best, but, you know, required some flexibility and curiosity about, like, okay, how might I get at different parts of these research questions if what I expected is not available to me? I also was lucky to be able to participate in some other projects, research projects that were not. I knew from entering my PhD program what I wanted to focus on in my research, but I think it was really beneficial for me to be in on some other projects that were on separate topics, but with kind of connective tissue where I could explore different research techniques, collaborate with people and try different things out and kind of see what worked. So it will. It wasn't just my, my project. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:19:32]: And I think, like, throughout, from the beginning of graduate school through to now, the big thing with research is that just like, resiliency and like, recognizing that everybody hits extreme roadblocks. I'm sure many people do. The classic story of I had just scheduled an really amazing field work about my, I believe, my fourth year of my PhD. It was basically what I had wanted to do in many ways since the beginning. I was gonna travel to do ethnographic research in a particular community. I was very excited. I felt like, you know, I'd done research, but I was like, this is really gonna change my whole trajectory. And then that was in March of 2020, and, you know, the whole thing got shut down due to the COVID pandemic. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:20:14]: So I think it's just that ability to be flexible, be committed enough to a project that you're interested in seeing it through for a long time, and that it has, like, a few different pieces that you can really dig into, but also being flexible enough that you can kind of adjust based on real world conditions, your own interest, interest. Things change in the field, especially in something like technology, so quickly that I think combination of, like, commitment and flexibility is really essential. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:41]: And finally today, looking back at your own graduate school experience, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education, whether it be in computer science, business or whatever degree that would help them find success sooner. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:20:56]: I'm a big believer in community support. You know, I think that definitely it's really important to find, like I mentioned, faculty advisors who are a good fit. But I also think that no one person is going to be able to provide all of the support and mentorship you need in going through something like graduate school. And so I think it's really essential to build connections with a range of faculty and peers and kind of people in the community who you can kind of get different kinds of support and advice from. You know, like maybe you have the one friend who you see at conferences who is going to be someone who you can exchange paper drafts with, and maybe you have someone who is going to be really good at brainstorming and someone else who really knows a particular method. I think just having that kind of community is really valuable. And it doesn't have to be within your program. It can be. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:21:57]: It doesn't have to be within your field. It can be. But I think finding that arrangement of people who can offer you support and who you can offer support to, that is like, I think the biggest piece to me in terms of like finding success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:13]: Well, Anne, I just want to say thank you. Thank you so much for joining us today, for sharing your own journey and for helping others to be able to think about graduate school in a little bit different way. And I wish you all the best, of course. Dr. Anne Jonas [00:22:25]: Thanks so much. I really appreciate the invitation. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:27]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:49]: Thanks again for spending time with me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:52]: As you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Breaking the Perfection Myth: Real Talk for Graduate Students
Are you a graduate student feeling the constant pressure to be flawless? Have you found yourself chasing impossible standards, believing that only perfect grades or perfect work will help you succeed? If this sounds familiar, you're not alone—and the new episode of "Victors in Grad School" is here to reassure and empower you. In a powerful conversation between Dr. Juanita Tookes and Dr. Christopher Lewis, Dr. Tookes shares a presentation about the Perfection Myth and dives deep into the experiences that graduate students face around perfectionism. The discussion is honest, validating, and filled with practical advice and heartfelt encouragement. Dr. Juanita Tookes shares her personal experience as a "recovering perfectionist," normalizing the struggle and reminding listeners that striving for perfection is a common—but ultimately unrealistic—desire. She explains that perfection is a constantly shifting, subjective concept defined by societal standards, cultural expectations, and comparison (especially in the era of social media). The elusive chase for perfection can leave students feeling anxious, burnt out, and always "less than," which is neither healthy nor sustainable. The podcast also digs into the impact of perfectionism on the brain, highlighting how a constant drive for flawlessness keeps students in a heightened state of fear and anxiety. This mindset, as Dr. Juanita Tookes explains, can deprive you of celebrating your achievements, push you toward burnout, and even negatively impact your mental and physical well-being. Listeners will appreciate the practical discussion of perfectionist behaviors—like overworking, fearing mistakes, avoiding help, and linking self-worth to performance. Dr. Christopher Lewis and Dr. Juanita Tookes reinforce that these behaviors are understandable in high-pressure environments like graduate school, especially when finances and career prospects are at stake, but they urge listeners to challenge these patterns for their own health and happiness. As the episode wraps up, you'll find wisdom in reframing mistakes as essential for growth, embracing imperfection as courageous, and celebrating persistence over unattainable perfection. There are even valuable resources recommended, including Brene Brown's "The Gifts of Imperfection." If you want to feel seen, inspired, and equipped to tackle grad school without the chains of perfectionism, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in and start your journey toward a more balanced, fulfilling academic life! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:03]: We have conversations with students, alumni, and. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:06]: Experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Hello, everyone. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:13]: Welcome. Really excited that you're here today, and I really appreciate you spending some time with us as we continue our student development series and partnership with our CAPS office on campus. And every term, I love being able to identify new topics that we can talk with you on to help you in the journey that you're on. And tonight I'm really excited because Dr. Juanita Tookes is back with us. And this topic, the topic that we're talking about tonight, is a really important one because a lot of times when I talk to graduate students, I hear many times that there are concerns and there's this feeling that you have to be perfect, that you have to get that a. That you always have to be at your best. And sometimes you can't always be at your best. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:59]: Sometimes you have to be willing to be okay where you're at. And, you know, the myth of being able to be perfect all the time is definitely that it's just a Myth. So today, Dr. Tooks is going to talk about the perfection myth and how as graduate students, you can reframe and rethink about things in a little bit different way. And so I'm really excited to have her here and to have her talk with us tonight. To Tactor Tooks, I'll turn it over to you. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:01:27]: Hello, everyone. I am so happy to be here again. As Dr. Lewis mentioned, this is a very valued partnership between the CAPS office and graduate studies. I love working with grad students, and a big part of my heart for grad students is because I remember being a grad student. I remember how hard it was. I am also recovering perfectionist. I don't know how many years in that I met that I'm at, but I will be the first to say that I suffer very badly with perfection. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:01:57]: And we're going to get into kind of what that looks like, how it can show up in your graduate student experience. But what I hope that you can get from this ultimately is feelings of validation. If you have gone through any of the things that we've talked about, I assure you you are not the only one. That's why I was the first to raise my hand. And I encourage you to engage in this conversation. I don't want to call it like a presentation, but feel free to use the zoom reactions. If there's anything that you relate to or anything that that really resonates with you, just use Some of the reactions, so that I know that, you know, what I'm saying is really kind of connect. You know, it's connecting with you. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:02:40]: This is going to be an honest, transparent space. You know, it's seven o' clock in the evening, so we're kind of loosening up. You know what I mean? So this is going to be a pretty easygoing conversation. It's going to be informative, it's going to be validating, it's going to be supportive. And like I said, I hope you walk away feeling seen, but also feeling empowered. And I hope I can inspire you all to think a little bit differently about how you're navigating your graduate student experience so that you can also start improving the state of your mental health so that you can actually enjoy this journey. So let's get into the perfection myth. Okay, so the plan for the conversation today is to talk about perfection as a definition, to also talk about perfection as a concept. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:03:23]: We're also gonna talk about perfection as far as how does this look in your brain? So we're gonna talk a little bit about some brain stuff, and then we're also gonna talk about how does that follow up in behavior. And then we're gonna talk about what does it mean when we're talking about being perfect as a graduate student? What does that even mean? Then we're gonna go through some myths and facts, and then we're just gonna wrap up. And in that part, I'll just leave some final thoughts and hopefully have time, you know, just based off of the information that we're going to go over today. But it'll be more, you know, conversational. If there's anything that you would like to express or anything that you would like to ask, let's talk about it. I'm also going to provide you with some resources that I hope will help you if perfection is an obstacle for you. And then we'll conclude our talk for the day so that you can enjoy the rest of your night. So let's talk about perfect as a definition. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:04:17]: So it was really interesting just looking up the meanings of perfect. And it's not because I didn't know it offhand, but I really like looking at official definitions for words. So when I looked across several sources, the word perfect means flawless, satisfying all requirements, accurate, precise, or exact, free from faults, defects, or blemishes, being the best possible. So I just want that to sit and sink in just for a second. I want your eyes to read over these words. Flawless, satisfying all requirements, being the best Possible, free from faults, defects, blemishes. Another definition was also complete. So I want these words to just sit and sink in as we continue on throughout this conversation. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:05:18]: So now let's talk about the concept, the perfect as a concept. So perfect as a concept is an idealized standard. Okay, Idealized standard. It's also subjective, meaning that it can be interpreted in many different ways across many different contexts, depending on who you might be talking to. So. So depending on you might have somebody's opinion or maybe a cultural standard, an industry standard. Perfection does not have an objective type of perspective. It's more subjective based off of who you're talking to and what's going on. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:06:05]: It's highly influenced by society. That's why it is always changing. So let's. Let's take beauty standards, for example. What is considered beautiful now may not have been beautiful five or 10 or 20 years ago, right? So, for example, I know that, like tattoos on models, for example, in the fashion industry, I want to say maybe 10 years ago, that was no. That was a no. No. You don't show tattoos because tattoos were not considered beautiful, which is fashion models often covered them if they were walking one way or doing print work. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:06:47]: But now tattoos are in, like tattoos are in. So everyone now they can be visible now they're acceptable, seen as a beautiful extension and artistic expression of someone's personality. But in the next two to three, four, five years, it could be something completely different. So there is never a stopping point for how people view beauty and beauty standards. Perfection is the same way society determines what is perfect. What does perfect mean? Who is perfect. And it can be harmful. Perfection can be harmful. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:07:25]: I was reading across some sources, and the sources were saying that perfection can be helpful or it can be harmful. And when it said it could be helpful, it said it could be helpful if it was used as a guide. If you use it as a guide to help you as far as, like, inspiring you, like working to such a high standard that it's inspiring you to do your best at the highest level possible without getting too high. It was kind of. I get what they were trying to say. If you aim for perfection, then you're going to put forth your best effort as far as being inspired to do your best. My concern about that, though, is everyone doesn't know where to draw the line. You know, when do I know that my good is good enough without obsessing about everything being right, you know, or complete or perfect? And that's why I don't necessarily agree that perfection can be Helpful, because most folks do not know where to draw the line, and they end up actually crossing that line into things, into a way of thinking that is unhealthy. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:08:42]: So I. My opinion goes with, it's harmful because it's often viewed as a requirement by most folks when we talk about what shapes perfection. And I'm going back to the point about it being influenced by society. It's also shaped by expectations. It's shaped by values. It can be shaped by routines. Culture comparison is a big thing that shapes perfection comparison. And that is a huge trap that everyone has fallen into, whether they've admitted it or not. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:09:17]: Especially in this age of social media where we. Whether we want to or not, we see how people are succeeding in life, whether it be their job or their grades or maybe the way that they're living their life. You know, they're going on vacations three times a year, and you're still trying to save up to get somewhere. You haven't been anywhere in like, maybe five years. I know in working with grad students in particular, I know students have told me sometimes that they are busting their brain trying to study for their exams and trying to catch up on readings and things like that. And they'll go on Instagram and see one of their peers who seems to be living the time of their life. They are outside taking trips, you know, enjoying social activities with friends and family. And then the other student is at home, like, how can I do that? Like, they just. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:10:08]: It's perfect for them. They get great grades. They are able to have a life. I'm over here hanging on by a thread. What am I not doing? I need to work harder because I need to have that kind of a life. So it's very easy to think that you. That people achieve this standard of perfection, and it makes other people feel very discouraged in themselves that they are not at that level, which makes them push themselves harder, to very harmful extents, to achieve something that is not achievable. And we're going to get to that when we talk about myths and facts. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:10:47]: But think about somebody pressing, pressing and pushing themselves to a limit that is not possible. And every day that they get up, they are pushing themselves to this unrealistic limit. Think about what that does with your mind. Think about what that does to your soul. Think about what that does to your physical body when you are pushing yourself to unrealistic limits every single day. So now let's talk a little bit about what goes on in the brain when you are a person who is endorsing perfection. And I also hope that with this conversation we can raise awareness about perfection. So maybe if you are someone who did not realize that your behaviors line up with being a perfectionist or acting in alignment with perfection, this can make you aware. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:11:41]: Not to make you ashamed, it's to make you aware so that you can modify your behavior to something that's more constructive and healthy. So perfectionism often keeps the brain in a heightened state of fear, which can result in anxiety and overthinking. This part of the brain that we're talking about is the amygdala. The amygdala is activated when you are in a constant state of fear. Because in this area of the brain, this is where you process emotions. A lot of emotional processing goes on in the amygdala, especially fear and anxiety. So this is where fight or flight is activated right there. You know, in the amygdala, rewards are for outcomes and not effort. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:12:27]: So this is the way cognitively that you are thinking about what you are doing, trying to reach a standard of perfection, right? So you are not going to reward yourself unless you get that perfect outcome, unless you get that 100%, unless you get that 4.0, unless you don't receive any negative feedback back for the whole semester. That is when you will reward yourself. But when you are holding yourself to that standard and you are depriving yourself of rewards because rewards are actually a very healthy thing to do, self rewarding is very, very healthy. Self rewarding and self celebrating. Because what it does is it acts as fuel for your motivation because you're pumping yourself up and cheering yourself on. When you do reward yourself for things that you do, things that you do achieve the wins that you do recognize with your pursuit as a grad student. But when you deprive yourself for when you deprive yourself of rewards, because remember, you are trying to achieve something that is not achievable. So what does that mean? If you are waiting for the outcome of perfection and perfection is not achievable, and you're depriving yourself of a reward until you reach this unachievable standard, guess what that means? That means that you're not going to get a reward, then you know that's what that means. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:13:50]: And so when you do not get a reward and you're trying to withhold this good thing from yourself, what ends up happening is you decrease dopamine. So now you know we're talking about hormones in the brain, right? So dopamine is like the. It's like the feel good hormone. It's called, like, the happy hormone. So when you reward yourself with something, you increase levels of dopamine in the brain. But when you deprive, deprive yourself of good things, that means you decrease the amount of dopamine that's being released in the brain. And I want to add, too, in this way of thinking, achievement, right, because you're. You're holding out rewards until you get the achievement or the outcome, the. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:14:33]: The perfect outcome that. That you want. When you do make an achievement with this line of thinking, it is often bringing you relief, not satisfaction. You're just relieved. Like, whoa, okay, you know, I got that 100% on that exam onto the next thing. It's not bringing you satisfaction. You're not thinking about how satisfied you are with how you studied and how hard you worked. It's just you worried yourself to the extent that you thought that you were going to fail, and you are like, whew, I did not fail. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:15:09]: All right? I'm relieved because I really thought I was going to get kicked out of this class and dismissed from the program, but I got 100%, and now it's on to the next thing. So you're not even stopping to celebrate the fact that you got 100%, and instead of being satisfied because of your diligent efforts, you are just. You're just plowing into the next thing. You're not even stopping to recharge. So I hope that you can see how unhealthy this is. Perfection. Perfection is like, I. I want you to think of like. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:15:39]: Like a horse driver. You know, I. I know we've all seen it where it's or not a horse driver. I'm sorry, it could be a horse driver, but almost like a. A husky team, right? Where it's like, go, go. You have the person on the little sled, and it's like, go. Mush. Mush. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:15:54]: That's kind of how perfection operates in your brain. Mush. Keep going. We don't have time to stop. We don't have time to reward. We don't have time to celebrate. We don't have time for this. You need to go into the next thing, and you better achie like you did the last time. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:16:09]: Think about how harsh that sounds, because that's a part of perfectionism, too. Very, very harsh treatment of yourself. Very, very harsh talk of yourself. There's no encouraging. There's no cheering. There's no embracing. It's just mush. Continue. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:16:27]: Go. We can't stop right now. Stopping is for the week. I really want you to hear how hard it is to operate under those types of mental conditions. And this is all going on in the brain. Perfectionism causes stress. It causes stress and burnout because stress leads to burnout. It's a part of the burnout experience when we're thinking about this. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:16:56]: When you think about stress, when somebody is stressed, that means that their brain and their body are not safe to rest. It's not safe. I got to be on edge. I got to be ready. I have to be on defense like I have to, you know, I'm on edge because I have to. Your body is in a state, your body and mind are in a state of alert. So it's right in connection with that fight or flight with that part that's going on in the amygdala, that part of the brain. So you're not able to ease up. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:17:24]: You're very tense, you're very worried, you're very alert, you're on edge and your body and your brain has to rest. Grad studies are very, It's a very intense level of education if you do not balance intense focus and concentration. You're looking at computer screens all day. You're reading text with extra small font, journal articles and books and chapters and like, things like that. If you do not give your, your brain and your body a chance to rest, you're going to burn them both. You're going to burn them out. You're going to burn them out. So I really want you to think about how stressful it is when you are putting your brain and your body under such hard conditions of working. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:18:09]: And when we talk about stress, we're talking about cortisol, increased levels of cortisol and adrenaline, because those are stress hormones. So again, we're still talking about brain functioning here. And the reason why I wanted to make sure that I talked about the brain because I think it's very, very important to have a physiological perspective of how these constructs as perfection really does have an impact not only on the psychological, but the physiological. It's all in alignment. How you think and how your brain conceptualizes it could really cause an imbalance in chemical hormones in the brain which affect your mood, which affect your mental health. It can affect your, your physical health. So it's really important to understand what, what perfection looks like on the inside of our brains. Also, perfection reduces cognitive flexibility, right? It's not flexible. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:19:06]: That's why you don't, that's why you feel like you can't make any Mistakes. Everything has to be perfect. You can't get any questions wrong on the exam. It doesn't matter that you got a 99%. You missed that one question. And now the test was 75 questions multiple choice. You missed one question. You still got an A. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:19:31]: But instead of celebrating yourself and appreciating all of the hard work that you put in, you are focused on that one question you missed. And I have heard students say to themselves, well, that was stupid. I was so stupid for that. Like, I should have known. Like, that question was so easy and I got it wrong. Not thinking that you got 74 other questions correct and you still passed, like, with an A. But when you have cognitive, when you don't have cognitive flexibility, it means that you have a rigid way of thinking. So you have A. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:20:02]: And this aligns with a fixed mindset. You cannot make a mistake. A mistake is weakness. You might as well just start all the way over. It doesn't matter that you got 74 of the questions correct. You need to study triple time on the final so that you can get 100%. So now let's talk about behavior. Right. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:20:24]: So we talked about cognitively, when you're thinking about perfection and this way of thinking, how is it impacting the hormones in your brain? Right. One thing about behavior is behavior follows thoughts. So whatever you're thinking, that is going to show up in how you act. Right? And I had to decrease the size of the font on this slide because the list is ongoing as far as behaviors that align with perfection. So perfection doesn't just show up as a mindset as we talked about on the previous slide, but it shows up as patterns of behavior as well. And one thing that I think is really important is these behavior behaviors are often subtle and they are socially rewarded. So let's just stop and park right there just for a second. Some behaviors of perfection are often rewarded, so that's why they are very hard to recognize. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:21:19]: So let's just take a workaholic, for example. I am also a recovering workaholic along with being a recovering perfectionist. And I think I would, you know, I had some flare ups because as a workaholic, the reason why I was a workaholic is because nothing was good enough. And I had to make sure that everything was perfect because nobody could know that I'm making mistakes. And I had to check this email 15 times because, you know, please don't find a typo. Like, do not find a typo. You know, that's just going to disregard all of my Intelligence. If there's one typo in this email. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:21:56]: So this is of course not the whole entire list. This list can go on for 10 more slides, but I just wanted to list some examples here. So spending excessive time on tasks to make them just right, difficulty stopping or submitting work. And I really, as I'm going through these examples and as you are reading them for yourselves on this screen, please take a minute to reflect on your own behavior. If you are doing these things again, it's to make you aware, not ashamed. Because the more aware you are, that puts you in a really good position to make modifications to your behavior in ways that help you experience your life in better quality ways. So avoiding new or unfamiliar opportunities. Harsh self criticism. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:22:47]: Harsh self criticism. After minor mistakes, like I just said with my example of the exam, sensitivity to feedback or criticism. I think this is a very important one because remember when I said earlier in the conversation about I am, you know, striving towards the goal of not receiving any kind of critique all semester? Well, you're going to get critiqued. Like critique is inevitable, you know, and critique is not a negative thing. But a lot of times, especially those who are perfectionists and who operate in perfection, critique is a bad word. It is not a bad word. You can receive positive critique, you can receive critique about growth, but it's all in how you perceive critique. If you think it's bad, then you are going to approach it in fear. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:23:41]: Remember that fight or flight. You feel threatened when you hear that the professor wants to talk to you after class. Or maybe there is a note that your instructor wrote on one of your assignments. You don't even want to read it because it's kind of like, why are you saying anything to me about this perfect product that I just gave you? If you want to meet with me, that means that I did something wrong and now I'm afraid. And what I might try to do is avoid reading the critique, avoid meeting with the professor. I might make some excuses as to why I don't return the email because I am afraid that you are going to tell me that all of my hard work is garbage and I wouldn't be able to handle that. So I'm just. I'm not going to listen to any critique at all. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:24:29]: Again, these are not helpful ways of thinking because critique, if you allow it to, it will help you to grow. If you realize that it does not define who you are as a person and it's meant to mold and shape and make you better, then you can approach receiving feedback differently. All or nothing thinking. Either it's perfect or it's trash. There is no in between. There is no in between at all. If it is not 100% on this test, I'm a failure. I'm stupid. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:25:03]: Doesn't matter that I got an 85. Doesn't matter if I didn't get the 100, I might as well have just gotten a 0. Hiding struggles to maintain a competent image. So being very worried about how you are perceived by others if they know that you're struggling. You know, I know a lot of students are worried about what their professors and what their instructors think about them. I had a student who had to repeat a class, and the reason why the student was struggling the second time around is because the student was very afraid that the instructor perceived them as incompetent because they had to take the class again instead of working with the professor to make sure that they had the skills and they had the extra help that they needed to pass the class the second time around, they avoided the instructor because they really thought the instructor just had a negative perception of that. That was really sad to hear. I'm really happy that I was able to work with that student to help them understand the benefits of being transparent with instructors so that can, you know, just demolish those distortions in your head that are telling you something that is completely not true. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:26:24]: Not asking for help. And a lot of times shame is associated with this, and it goes right to the point before it. Hiding struggles to maintain a competent image. I don't want to ask for help. If I ask for. Let's just, for example, I can't ask for help as an assistant director. I'm the assistant director. I'm the ad. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:26:43]: I can't ask for any help. What is my supervisor going to think if I ask her? If I ask her for help on this project, I'm supposed to know everything. I shouldn't have a question for her. If I have a question for her, she's going to think that I can't do this job. So I'm going to continue to struggle with something that I don't understand versus asking a question from somebody who knows and can give me understanding because I am too afraid that they're going to think that I am not going to be able to perform well. So all of the falsified things that we tell ourselves because we are afraid. We're afraid about what other people will think. We're afraid about what's going to happen if we go out and do something new or different. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:27:26]: We're afraid about falling short. We're afraid. Fear is a very, very intense and paralyzing emotion. And that's why it's so important to have conversations like this, so that you don't feel as afraid as afraid. And knowing that there's help out there for you if you are dealing with a 10 sphere like this, struggling to delegate and share tasks, because a lot of times we're afraid to let others know that we might need some help. But with perfection, it's also about control. Nobody can do it like me, so I'm gonna just do it myself. I remember working with someone who was working on a huge project, and they needed help with the project, but instead of asking for help, they worked over about four hours to complete it, when they could have completed it in about maybe an hour, maybe 90 minutes at the most, if they would have asked for help from their team. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:28:25]: And so we had to kind of explore that together about why didn't you ask your team for help if they were all present and they said that they would help you? And the response was, well, I have a particular way that I like to do things, and so I know how I like it. So I just decided to do it myself. But this was at the cost of the person working over four hours, not getting paid overtime, working through their break period. And this is not physically or psychologically healthy. Right? Difficulty accepting praise or success, and then comparison. So if we think about the themes with these examples, we see overworking, we see control, we see rigidity, and we see emotional suppression. All of this is part of the experience and the endorsing operating under perfection. So let's talk about the perfect student when it comes to the grad student experience. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:29:32]: One thing that I would like to ask, and if you feel free to put it in the chat as we go through this particular slide, but why do you think grad students in particular feel the need to be perfect? Just type it in the chat. There's no wrong answers for this, but I would really like to know what you think as to why grad students would feel like they need to achieve a standard of perfection. I know that, and I explain to students this all the time. Graduates school is a different level of education. The ante is definitely upped when it comes to grad school and the expectations and the evaluations, they're different, you know, than undergrad. And so it can add some pressure to what students, you know, think about themselves coming into a grad program. We have some answers, some things in the chat. So let's take a pause for the cause and see what you all have to say. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:30:36]: So, Michelle, you said money spent for the program and loans because it is a higher level of education. So we feel as if we need to show we are highly competent, Very, very insightful. And I appreciate those responses. Michelle, I want to touch on what you said. Money spent for the program and loans. I have worked with grad students who have been dismissed from their program because they may have failed a course or weren't doing academically well. And one of the this experience is heartbreaking for staff and faculty because that's not what we want for any student. But it happens. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:31:24]: But students are really afraid in situations like this because they fear like, I went through all of this. I still owe money on these loans and I don't even have a degree to show for it because I got dismissed from the program. I'm a failure. I have all of this money and I have nothing to show for it. So I'm glad that you touched on that, Michelle, because sometimes the money is very pressuring. Spending all this money going to college, going to law school, going to medical school, spending all of this money trying to get this education. And what if I don't do well? Like in this case, I was talking about students who actually were dismissed from programs. But what about students who are doing okay, you know, they're actually doing good? Sometimes that loan, that financial pressure, Right. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:32:12]: And just knowing that you have all of this debt, it could make you feel like. Or all of this money that you're either investing or in money that you have to pay back, it can make you feel pressure about, well, what if I don't make it? What if I don't succeed and then I don't get a job and then I'm stuck with all of this debt? What am I going to do? So now anxiety is already making you think that you've been dismissed from a program when you're actually doing quite well. So I'm glad you touched on that. Let's read a little bit more. So, Dr. Lewis, thank you for contributing criticism of your work. Doesn't feel like this draft needs revision. It feels like maybe I don't belong here. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:32:50]: And this breeds perfectionism. Yep. Grad programs select people who are already top of their class, highly motivated, used to being the smart one. So suddenly everyone is talented and the old identity, old identity advantage disappears when your peer group shifts. You can start thinking everyone else is doing better than me. I have to prove I deserve to be here. That pressure can morph into perfectionism. I agree 100%. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:33:18]: When I used to work with medical students, in particular, I used to work for Michigan State's University's College of Osteopathic Medicine. So I had students who were coming from undergrad going into doctoral programs, and in undergrad, they were at the top of their class, right? They were at the top of their class, but then they took that first anatomy class in their first semester of med school. They may have been at the top of their anatomy and physiology. I forgot the coursework. It's been so long. I used to know this like the back of my head, but it's like, you took anatomy courses in undergrad and you were at the top, but then you take your first anatomy class at the doctoral level in med school, and you're not doing so hot. You're used to being the smart one, the one that's at the top of their class, and now you're like, what the heck happened? Like, what happened? I just graduated a few months ago. What happened to my brain just over the last few months? And what I had to tell students a lot of the time is, this is medical school. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:34:21]: This is not undergrad. We are not in Kansas anymore, okay? This is a whole new level of learning and education. You got a lot of stuff coming at you. The teaching structure is different, the content is different. So you can't use the same strategies of study that you may have used in undergraduate, because you're going to have to develop a whole new infrastructure of studying and working as a. As a. As a doctoral student, as a med student. So I try to very much encourage students to think it's not you. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:34:55]: It's not anything that changed with your brain. It's the fact that your level of education and the domain of learning that you're in has changed. And like Dr. Lewis pointed out, everybody was at the. Everybody's at the top of their class. This is med school, so they're taking the top of the top. That's why everyone doesn't get in. It's very competitive, and we're going to. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:35:13]: Oh, and which goes into my next. Goes into my next point. Right? Competitiveness. Grad programs are more competitive than undergrad education because they only have so many slots to fill with students. So the competitiveness can also make students feel like they have to be perfect. Imposter syndrome is interwoven all up and through this presentation. Dr. Lewis and I, we done a lot of presentations on imposter syndrome, so that is also mixed in here and also failure conversations it's taboo. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:35:48]: We don't talk about failure in college. One of the things that I really loved doing when I was working with medical students was talking to faculty who were willing to be transparent about their failures as medical students in their education, in residency, when it was time to take their board exams. And surprise, surprise, a lot of faculty were not willing, they did not want to be transparent about those struggles with students because they felt like students perceived me as the one who was supposed to know everything. If I let them know that I failed my license exam, I am not going to be a credible resource. They're not going to look at me as credible. But I'm like, no, actually it probably would help you connect a lot of bit more with students if they know that you did experience a failure. And look at you now, you still became a doctor, you're still very successful, you still know a boatload of stuff that they don't know. But it was the faculty's perception of themselves that still made them feel, which at least that's what I picked up. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:36:51]: There were still elements of shame about those past failures, which is why they were not willing to be transparent. And if I add, it doesn't mean that you have to share all your business about every failure that you ever done. Transparency is not a man mandatory thing that you have to do, but it's one of those things. Whereas if you use it in the right way, it could be a powerful change agent as far as how students think of themselves and how they look at authority figures. Because a lot of times they might look at an authority figure like I wish I could be like Dr. So and so or Mr. And Ms. So and so. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:37:24]: They're so smart. I know, like they just whiz through school and I'm up here struggling to know that your professor also had shortcomings. If kind of changes the perspective of they can do no wrong. Like putting them up on these high pedestals. It brings them down to a human level where it's like, well, if they can experience a failure and they can still make it, I can make it too. So it's more so inspirational. It's definitely not something that could put someone in a negative light if you perceive it that way. Sometimes a dangerous truth. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:38:00]: In many programs, the most praised students are the ones who work constantly. Say yes to everything, never set boundaries, appear always capable. If the culture implicitly rewards intensity, students learn, my worth equals my output. Perfectionism becomes a survival strategy to stay respected. Agree 100% Dr. Lewis. I remember as a grad student in my PhD program, I would always tell my professors, like, every time I would see them, if you need anything, just let me know. If you need anything, just let me know. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:38:33]: One of my professors stopped me and said, juanita, I know what you're doing. I know all that you're doing. There's nothing that you would be able to do for me. Not because you're not capable, but you don't have the time. You don't have the bandwidth. You're teaching classes this semester. You're in internship. You're still taking courses at night, working in the counseling center part time. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:38:57]: During the day, you're doing clinical supervision, like working on some research. You don't have it to do anything for me. And it really made me look at myself. Like, why am I telling people that I am still available to do something if I'm not available? But I thought that if faculty knew that I was always available, it would make me look better as a student that they know that I'm doing a thousand things, and I can still do a thousand more things. So I was so appreciative of that professor who said, juanita, you can't. And that is okay. You know? And when you think about what grad students think about, they think about, like, letters of recommendation, if they're going to go on with their education. They think about maybe possibly being on somebody's research team. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:39:44]: It's kind of like if I keep making myself available, then they'll remember that. And then when it's time, you know, to get on their research team or maybe, you know, if I ask them for a letter of recommendation, they'll write it. Not even thinking about the fact that maybe they would just do it anyway simply because you just asked, not because you overworked yourself. Very good conversation in the chat. Thank you so much for everyone contributing. All right, we're almost done. Let's get into some myths now. So you're not the only one who's thought this. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:40:11]: Okay. I think I've thought everything on this list. So perfection is achievable. Some of these we've already answered, right? We already said that perfection is not achievable because it's constantly changing. So there's. There's not a final endpoint, a destination, a particular bar where it's like, that's the end. Because it's constantly changing due to various things in the world. Being perfect is the key to high achievement. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:40:39]: Mistakes are signs of incompetence. That's why you should never make one as a Grad student, you should never make one. If everything is perfect, no one can criticize you. What's to criticize? It's all done perfectly. There's no error, there's no mistake. So there's nothing to say, right? Perfection improves confidence. Let's take some time. Let's let it sit, let's let it sink. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:41:07]: Let's think before we go to these facts. Especially that, those last two. If everything is perfect, no one can criticize you. And perfection improves confidence. Okay, now let's talk about some facts. Because the way that you fight fear. Right, Because I want you to think about perfectionism. Perfectionism is connected to anxiety and anxiety is based in fear. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:41:33]: So what is driving perfection? Fear. That's what I want you to realize. It's not because you want to do so well. No. You're afraid of something. That's why you don't want to make a mistake. That's why you don't want to let others help you. That's why you cannot submit this draft right now. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:41:50]: Even though you've read it a hundred times. You are afraid of something. And the way that you fight fear is with facts. Because anxiety will always try to scare you with something that hasn't even happened yet. Something that is so out of this world, but it seems very real. Because it's a threat. And threats make us afraid. That's why in the part of the brain that processes emotions. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:42:13]: Put it in the chat. If you remember the part of the brain that I mentioned that processes emotions, especially anxiety and fear, that fight or flight. What part of the brain is that Starts with an A. Put it in the chat if you remember. This is not a pop quiz, I promise you. Let's fight this fear with some facts. Yes, Michelle. The amygdala. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:42:35]: Woo hoo. I wish I had some prizes to give out, but I don't. I just have little zoom, little zoom responses. So let me find a nice little zoom response. Woohoo. Thanks, Michelle. Okay, so like I said, perfection is always changing. So that's that. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:42:52]: Success usually comes from persistence, not perfection. So remember what we said on the last slide. Being perfect is the key to high achievement. Now, high achievement usually comes from persistence. You're learning from mistakes and you're adaptable. So once you've made mistakes and kind of learned what to do better, then you change, you modify, you try again. That's where success comes from. Mistakes are essential for learning and growth. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:43:20]: Because remember what the myth was, Mistakes are a sign of incompetence. No, mistakes are actually essential. They are a part of your success process. You will not be able to succeed without making a mistake and without failing at something. Okay? Criticism is inevitable because remember the myth was if everything is perfect, no one can criticize you. Well, you're going to receive critique no matter what. So you're going to be constantly evaluated and critiqued. You're not going to be able to avoid it. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:43:52]: So that's why it's very important to know. How do you conceptualize critique? Is it because everything I'm doing is garbage and I must have done something wrong? No, it actually could be because you're doing something right and doing something well. Or this could be information to help me become better. Right. Versus internalizing it and taking it personal. Perfectionism often undermines confidence by tying self worth to performance. Because remember that last myth was perfectionism improves confidence. Actually, it undermines confidence because it is tied to your self worth based off of how you perform. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:44:28]: So if you do not perform well, that means that you are not looking at yourself well, you're looking at yourself as incompetent or stupid or I don't deserve to be in this program and I should have known way better than that. I'm going to have to study a lot harder. Your self worth is low because you perceive your performance as low. So you actually are not confident. Right. So I wanted to insert this research in here because I was really, really just intrigued about everything that I was learning. And so I just wanted to see kind of what research had to say about perfectionism. And so I was looking at this study about academic perfectionism, psychological well being, and suicidal ideation in college students. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:45:12]: And so Fernandez, Garcia and colleagues looked at a group of over 1200 Bachelor's, Master's and doctoral university students. And these students all completed a questionnaire that measured different things. And the study aimed to analyze the extent to which high levels of perfectionism could compromise psychological well being. And so what the results showed was that there was a direct and significant relationship between perfectionism and academic performance. So when you have a direct significant relationship or positive relationship, that means as variable A goes up, variable B goes up. So variable A, you know, is perfectionism, variable B is academic performance. So students who reported endorsing perfectionism at higher levels also had higher academic performance than those who did not report that they were operating under perfectionism. But for some students, there was a significant but inverse relationship found between perfectionism and psychological well being. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:46:22]: So we're not talking about academic performance anymore. Now the variable C is well being. So when we have a significant an inverse relationship. That means as variable A goes up, variable C goes down. Right. So students who reported endorsing perfectionism at higher levels, their well being was at a lower level. Right. And so this was indicative of higher, higher numbers of students reporting that they were experiencing suicidal thoughts. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:47:01]: Right. So when we see students reporting a higher level of suicidal ideation or thoughts, that means your mental health is low, if that is high. Right. So when we talk about an inverse relationship, that means one goes up, one goes down. The more perfectionism you endorse, the lower your psychological well being is, which opens up to the door to poor mental health symptoms like suicidal thoughts. So I just thought that that was really interesting and I wanted to share that information with you all. Okay, so now we're at the conclusion. So now we're going to wrap up. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:47:39]: And I love quotes. I'm a quote person, I love quotes. So I just wanted to leave you all with some quotes that I found in regards to perfectionism. Done is better than perfect. Now, the quote that I found was from Sheryl Sandberg, but I actually have heard this same statement many times throughout my grad school experience, especially when I was working on my dissertation. And I mentioned that because a lot of doctoral students who are working on dissertations want a perfect dissertation. It has to be perfect. Because this is high stakes. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:48:15]: If I don't pass this, I don't get my doctorate. And if I don't get my doctorate, what does this whole experience mean? Going back to what you said, Michelle, all the money that I invested and all the time that I spent and all the courses that I took and the grades that I if I do not pass the dissertation, I don't get my doctorate. So it's a very pressuring environment. There's a lot on the line here. But I remember a dissertation coach, Dr. Ramon Goins, I remember him saying, you know, a done dissertation is better than a perfect one. And I've also been told too, which was comforting in a way, your dissertation may not be your best piece of work. More than likely it's probably not going to be because it's the first big project that you've ever done as a brand new doctor. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:49:05]: So it's probably not going to be your best work. Your best work is going to come after that when you have more time and more experiences and more exposure to doing research and writing and all of these other things. So I want you to take this with you. Done is better than perfect. Get it done. Just get it done. You know, finish the Chapter, finish the test. Like, don't overanalyze what you've done. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:49:29]: Send the email. Like, get it done. Because if you're wasting time over analyzing to make sure that it's perfect, then that means that something is left unfinished and unsubmitted and you're not achieving the goal, which is to complete what you start. Have the courage to be imperfect. I really love this because it is an act of courage to embrace your imperfections. It is. It really, really is. I want you all to think of yourself as courageous. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:49:59]: It is courageous to know that, hey, I have some shortcomings. Hey, you know, I don't always get it right all the time. I don't really know this area very well. You know, it takes courage to stand up to perfection. It takes courage. It takes bravery to stand up and look perfection in the eye and say, I'm okay with not knowing how to do this. I'm okay with asking for help. It's okay, it's okay. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:50:25]: I gotta see. It's okay. I'm gonna do better next time. The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake because you can't learn anything from being perfect. And remember what I said mistakes are. I know you're going to have. I know you got some amazing professors, some amazing instructors, some amazing mentors, right? But the best teacher that you're going to have, not just in grad school but in life, are mistakes. You are going to learn a lot from them. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:50:54]: I don't want you to just think about academic mistakes. I want you to think about life mistakes that you've made. Okay? Think about the value of the lesson and the mistakes. If you are so busy internalizing and questioning why you made the mistake in the first place, guess what's going to happen? You're going to miss the lesson. And when you miss the lesson, that means you got to repeat the course. I'm not just talking about in grad, in the grad program. I'm talking about in life. When you miss the lesson, you have to retake the course. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:51:23]: Trust me, I've been a summer, a summer school student in life many times before. Okay, you want to make sure that. And I know sometimes we can get bummed out when we know that, that we've made a mistake. And, you know, give yourself that permission, right? But draw the line and say, okay, what am I supposed to look for here? What am I looking at here? Okay, so if you are experiencing anxiety or fear or if you know your perfection, your perfectionistic behavior is running your life. And you need help. If you need help developing new ways of doing things. If you need skills, if you need tools, come caps. Come to caps. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:52:07]: We're located on the second floor of the University Center. I know that we have grad students who are online programs. Maybe they are not on campus. We can talk to you virtually via Zoom. If you want to inquire about setting up some counseling sessions so that you can have professional help standing up to perfection, building up that confidence in healthy and constructive ways, just go to umfl.edu caps. All of the information that you need to know will be found there as far as how to inquire about a consultation with us to potentially start services. And I also have my email address right there. So if you want to email me, please do. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:52:50]: I will answer any questions that you have about mental health resources, perfectionism, like anything that we've talked about. And I am actually going to put a resource in the chat here, which is a book by Brene Brown. I've actually read this book and I'm. I hope I can find it. I've read this book. I'm actually reading it for the third time, but I'm gonna put it here in the chat. The book is called the Gifts of Imperfection. It's a really good read. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:53:30]: So I'm going to copy it here just as a recommendation and as a resource. Yep. And that is the conclusion of the presentation. So I know we have a couple of minutes left, so I'm going to stop sharing so that whoever, if you have any final thoughts or if there's anything that you would like to express, you know, feel free to go ahead. I'm definitely opening up the floor to you all. Thank you so much for your transparency, Shannon. Like, that's what I was hoping. I just want to encourage, you know, because we all struggle with things, you know, all of us. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:54:09]: But struggles don't define who we are. It just shines a light on an area that we can receive some help in. So that's why it's so important to ask for help. So thank you so much for your comment. So I'll turn it back over to you, Dr. Lewis. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:54:22]: Sounds good. Really appreciate it, Dr. Tookes, for all of this amazing information. This is something that I think everybody should be learning about because I think all of us have been impacted by this in some way through our graduate school experiences. And I love what you said about all of your faculty have experienced this in some way. And they may not talk about it, but they have dealt with it. The professionals on campus have dealt with it, they may still be dealing with it. You never know. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:54:52]: You know, none of us. You can't keep it in the back of your mind that I'm the only one that's not perfect. Because no one around you is perfect. None of us are perfect. So I really appreciate, Dr. Tux, you sharing this today and thank you all for being here. Dr. Juanita Tookes [00:55:06]: Yeah, thank you so much. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:55:08]: Wish you all the best as you go through this term and beyond. If you need anything, please reach out. The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. It's if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to seeing speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:55:47]: If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected]
Balancing Family, Career, and Grad School: Tameka Shepard's Inspiring Journey
Are you thinking about taking the leap into graduate school, or are you already on that journey and looking for reassurance and advice? In the latest episode of the "Victors in Grad School" podcast, host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Tameka Shepard, Academic Advisor and Business Programs Recruiter at the University of Michigan-Flint, to explore her powerful story of balancing family, career, and her pursuit of an MBA. From the start, Tameka Shepard is candid about her motivations: a desire to give her children an example of lifelong learning, and a vision to one day open her own coffee shop. With a background in social work, she offers a unique perspective on how diverse educational experiences can complement each other—highlighting the value of understanding people in the business world. When it came to picking her MBA program, Tameka Shepard describes how flexibility was key. Western Governors University's online, self-paced structure made it possible for her to manage graduate school alongside raising kids, working full-time, and supporting a traveling spouse. Time management and setting boundaries were crucial tools for her success. Tameka Shepard shares how she carved out early mornings and late nights for study, and how open conversations with her family helped them support her goals—reminding listeners that prioritizing your education sometimes means missing out on other events, but the long-term benefits are worth it. The episode doesn't shy away from the challenges of grad school. Tameka Shepard bravely discusses facing imposter syndrome and struggling through a difficult class, ultimately persisting to show her children (and herself) the importance of not quitting. She highlights the freedom to take breaks to avoid burnout, and encourages others to listen to themselves—reminding us that there's no one "right" timeline for finishing a degree. Perhaps most valuable are Tameka Shepard's reflections on what she wishes she'd known: the importance of networking, communicating effectively, and not feeling guilty about progressing at your own pace. Her story is a compelling mix of practical advice, honest emotion, and hope for others who are considering or pursuing graduate education. Ready to be inspired by real-life experiences and actionable tips for success? Listen to the full episode with Tameka Shepard and let her journey motivate you to take the next step in yours. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week we are on a journey together. And I call it a journey because it truly is a journey. Every person, every individual that is thinking about graduate school goes through a journey that is very unique to themselves, depending on the program, depending on who they are, where they are in their life. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:40]: And no matter if you are just at the very beginning, just starting to think about graduate school, or if you have already applied or if maybe you've been accepted or you're in graduate school, doesn't matter, you're still on that journey. And we're on that journey together. That's why this podcast exists every week. I love being able to talk to you about ways in which you can find success in this graduate school journey that you're on. And I love introducing you to new people that have gone to graduate school before you that can give you some perspectives and some thoughts about what they had to do in that time in their own life. So today we have another great guest. Tameka shepherd is with us today, and Tameka is an academic advisor and business programs recruiter for the University of Michigan, Flint's School of Management. He's. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:28]: And I am really excited to be able to have her here and to talk to her about her own journey in graduate school and to welcome her to the show. Thanks so much for being here, Tamika. Tameka Shepard [00:01:37]: Thank you for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:38]: It is my pleasure. I really appreciate that you are here today and I always love starting the show by taking you back in time. So I know that you did your undergraduate work at Spring Arbor University and then you graduated, you graduated, you went, you started work. And at some point between that time an undergraduate student and as you were going and working, you made a decision. You made a decision that you weren't done going to college, you wanted to continue your education and you decided to go back and get a graduate degree. Take me back to that point where you were starting that process for yourself. What made you decide that that was the right time in your life to go back to graduate school? Tameka Shepard [00:02:24]: So at that time, I just knew that I wasn't done with my education. I knew that as a full time, working, solo parenting mom at home, my husband traveled, that I wanted something more. I wanted to be able to give my kids a little something extra. I wanted them to see how important education is. And so it was just, it was good timing. I was pregnant and so I was working full time. I was working from home. And I just thought, you know, I'm not getting any younger. Tameka Shepard [00:03:00]: I was already in my 30s and I just decided, decided I'm just gonna do it. Now. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:05]: Every student has the ability to pick any program. Now. You could have, you could have studied anything that you had wanted. You made a decision to study a mba. You decided to go and get a master's in Business Administration. And I guess first and foremost, before we even talk about where you decided to go, why an mba? Tameka Shepard [00:03:23]: So my ultimate goal is to. This is kind of like a retirement dream is to own a coffee shop. And so my undergrad degree is in social work. Very. From a business degree. But in every aspect of business, it, I think it, it helps to know how to kind of work with individuals, especially individuals who may have mental health issues, things like that. So I do think that they kind of go hand in hand. However. Tameka Shepard [00:03:50]: So again, my ultimate goal is to own my own business. And I wanted to have at least a foundation behind me and not kind of jumping into it blind when I'm older. And I've just always been surrounded by business minded individuals. And so I just really felt like that was kind of where my calling was. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:10]: And I know that you chose to attend Western Governor's University, and there are many MBA programs across the nation. We have one right here at the University of Michigan, Flint. So there's a lot of different options in a lot of programs that you could have chose. Talk to me about that thought process, that decision process that you went through and how you whittled that down for yourself to decide that Western Governors was the right fit for you. Tameka Shepard [00:04:37]: So I decided on Western Governors because it is an entirely online university. And although U of M Flint has completely online MBA program at that point in time, I had a friend who was also attending Western Governors and she loved it. And the way that they structure the program is where you work on one course at a time and you can move through the course at your own pace. And that was really what kind of made me choose that program specifically. I knew that I was having a baby soon. I also had other kids at home and I needed something that was going to fit my schedule and that I could kind of work on on my own time. And nothing that was super structured with. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:19]: Kids at home, with having another child on the way at the time you had A lot to balance. Especially you said having a partner, a spouse that traveled a lot. So you're balancing a lot of different things and then you're adding another thing into the mix. And a lot of graduate students are also balancing life, work, family, personal responsibilities, lots of different things. So talk to me about that balance for yourself. And how did you do that? How were you able to do that and do it well so that you could still find success in that graduate school journey? Tameka Shepard [00:05:53]: A lot of it was managing my time and finding little bits of time throughout every day where I could read out of the textbook, watch recorded lectures, submit assignments, things like that. So sometimes, sometimes that looked like early mornings, three, four o'clock in the morning and carving out some time in the morning, sometimes it was late night. Really just kind of depended on the kids and their needs and things like that. There were a lot of family events that I had to not attend, so birthday parties for nieces and nephews. I just really made my education a priority and I managed my time in a way that I knew that if I just got it done, spend a year graduate, get my mba, that I would have the rest of my life to attend birthday parties and things like that. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:40]: And every graduate student goes through a transition because the way you're educated as a undergraduate student is different than the way you're educated as a master's student is different than the way that you're educated as a doctoral student. So at every level of education, there's different expectations in regards to what your faculty expect of you, what you expect of yourself, and more so as you were going through that transition for yourself and you did find success, what did you have to do to truly set yourself up for success as you transitioned into your graduate program? And what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout the entirety of your graduate degree? Tameka Shepard [00:07:20]: A good piece of it was talking to my kids about the importance of education and why I was choosing to go back to school and get my master's degree. And we just kind of set up boundaries about if mom is in her office, in the door is shut, that means she is working on school. That's like focus time. So no interruptions. Carving out dedicated amounts of time every day to be able to do that, but really just setting boundaries within the family so that they kind of knew what to expect. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:53]: A lot of times I hear from graduate students that there's a point in time in a graduate degree where they sometimes feel imposter syndrome, or sometimes it's self doubt regarding being a graduate student, the studies that they're in, etc. Talk to me about that for yourself and how that may have reared its head for you and how did you handle it? Tameka Shepard [00:08:16]: So one class in particular I really struggled with and each of the classes were competency based, so you didn't necessarily earn a grade for the course itself. The average was, was a B. You had to have a 3.0 or better in the class to be able to pass it. And I could not pass this class' final exam. And they allow you to meet with a professor, go over the work, things like that. But it took multiple tries for me to understand the content. And I really struggled with that because learning has always came pretty easy to me. And so to have this one class that is just like impossible to pass, it seemed like. Tameka Shepard [00:08:57]: And so just trying over and over and putting in all of the effort that I absolutely had, meeting with the professor multiple times to go over content, it was really a struggle. And there was a time where I thought maybe I am just not cut out for grad school. Maybe I need to just throw in the towel. But I was halfway through and I knew that I had my kids watching me and I didn't want them to see me quit. When you start something, you finish it. It's kind of what I've always taught them. And so that's what I did. I just powered through and got it done. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:29]: So I mentioned the fact that you chose an MBA and you talked about your dream of owning that coffee shop down the road and having that dream for yourself. Now as you look back at what you degree you got, if you had to do it all over again, would you choose the same program or path? And if so, why? Or why not? Tameka Shepard [00:09:48]: I would. And only because it gives a good foundation for all of the different aspects of business. That's not to say that I wouldn't maybe someday go back and get another degree or even certificates or something like that to kind of help in other areas. But the MBA really gives you kind of a well rounded foundation of all of the things that you need to be successful in a business, business or as a business owner. That's not to say that I could have a business and do all of the accounting for the business. I would not be able to do that, but I would be able to know kind of a starting point for marketing and the supply chain aspect and just all of those different areas. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:28]: Another thing that I hear from students as they're going through, and we talked about balance earlier, but sometimes students are also impacted by Burnout. And you get to that point in whether it's the midway point, whether it's your first term, it doesn't really matter. But a lot of times some students will feel burnout. How did you avoid burnout or recover when you felt overwhelmed? Tameka Shepard [00:10:52]: So I was able to take a break in between classes if I needed to because I took them one at a time and kind of did them at my own pace. If I was able to push through six classes in a semester, great. But if I only did one, that was okay as well. So if I got to a point where I was starting to feel burnt out, I would just take a little bit of a break and not start another class until I felt like I was ready to do that. My biggest piece of advice for people when they're feeling burnt out is to take a break. That's okay. This doesn't have to be a sprint, it can be a marathon. And if you need to take your time getting the degree, that's okay. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:30]: How do you feel that graduate school changed the way that you think, work, or approach problems? Tameka Shepard [00:11:36]: It definitely helps with critical thinking and being more familiar, being more aware of how other people think as well. And so I, I feel like it helps with problem solving. It definitely help with my critical thinking skills. It helps with communicating with like minded individuals. It helps with communicating with my colleagues here at the university. I think communication probably is the biggest piece. It really helps teach you how to communicate effectively. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:04]: And as you think back to when you started your graduate program, what's something that you wish someone had told you before you started graduate school? Tameka Shepard [00:12:15]: I think the one thing that I wish somebody would have told me when I started was that it's okay to take your time and you don't have to finish in the typical allotted time that a master's degree takes. It is okay to take a break. If you need to take a break, it is okay to take one class a semester. If you can only handle one class a semester, you don't have to rush through the program. It doesn't matter how old you are when you get the degree. It age is not a factor in your success in a grad program. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:49]: And finally, as you think back to your graduate school experience, what are some tips beyond what you've already shared that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Tameka Shepard [00:13:02]: Networking, talking with your fellow students Talking to and getting to know your professors Taking advantage of networking opportunities when they're being presented to you. If you're not able to attend, you know on campus networking opportunities, that's okay. But virtual networking opportunities, an internship, if that is something that you are able to do, take advantage of an. Of an internship, I think that that provides a lot of success later in life. One of the things that I wish that I would have had access to in my specific graduate program was networking and I didn't get to do that. So I feel like I missed out on that big piece of grad school. So that is probably my one big takeaway that I. That I would wish all grad students to take advantage of. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:49]: Definitely. Networking is an important factor and something that you need to be. Networking with the students in your class, networking with the faculty members, finding ways to identify alumnus from the program that you've graduated from, connections with industry, doing what you can to set yourself up for meeting the goals that you've set for yourself. Just like what Tamika was just saying. But. But the other thing that I would throw out there is take advantage of opportunities that are thrown at you while you're going through your graduate program as well. I know that our school of management brings in alumni to speak and programs do that. They will bring alumnus in and these are distinguished individuals in their field and you have the opportunity then to learn from them. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:38]: But then also a lot of times there's opportunities afterwards to go and talk to them and to pick their brain or meet other people that are at the same event. Connect, build those connections and you never know what doors will open. Tamika, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. And it definitely sounds like your journey is not over, that you might have some more education down the road in your path. And I know that you are continuously talking to students that want to do graduate school about these different topics. So I appreciate you doing that as well. But I truly thank you for your time today and I wish you all the best. Tameka Shepard [00:15:15]: Been a pleasure. Thank you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:16]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgradoffice.umflint.edu.
How Many Graduate Programs Should I Apply To? Expert Advice for Grad School
Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited that you're back again this week. And today I don't have a guest. I am talking to you about some of the questions that I have gotten from over the time that we've been doing this podcast and over the years to try and help to answer some of your questions. And today, the question that we're going to be answering is, how many graduate programs should you apply to? If you've started researching graduate school, there's a moment that almost always happens. At first, it's exciting — you're exploring programs, imagining the possibilities, picturing yourself in a new career or stepping into a leadership role. You start bookmarking program pages, saving "how to apply" checklists, and telling yourself, Okay… I'm really doing this. And then… reality hits. You realize there are a lot of graduate programs out there. A LOT. You might find yourself asking: "Should I apply to just one program?" "What if I only apply to two and don't get in?" "What if I apply to ten and burn out halfway through?" "What's the smart number?" "What do people normally do?" If that's you — first, take a deep breath. You're not behind. You're not doing it wrong. And you're definitely not the only person trying to solve this puzzle. Today we're going to walk through this question together: How many graduate programs should you apply to? And I'll give you a clear recommendation — but even more importantly, I'll help you choose the right number for you. The honest answer: it depends… but not as much as you think I know "it depends" can be the most annoying answer ever, so let me say this upfront: Most prospective graduate students should apply to between 3 and 6 programs. That's not just a random number — it's the sweet spot where you: give yourself strong options, reduce risk of not getting in anywhere, and avoid overwhelming yourself with too many applications. But of course, there are reasons to apply to fewer… or more. So instead of giving you a number and sending you on your way, I want to help you decide: What's realistic for your time and energy What's appropriate for your field What's strategic for your goals What gives you the best chance at admission and the best chance at success once you're in Because here's what I tell students all the time: Getting accepted matters… but choosing the right program matters more. Start with this: What kind of graduate applicant are you? Before we get into numbers, I want to ask you a question. When you picture applying to grad school, are you someone who: 1) Wants a clear, simple plan You want 2–3 strong options, you want to focus, and you want to avoid the stress of "too many choices." 2) Wants options and flexibility You want to be strategic, apply broadly, compare offers, and decide later. 3) Is feeling uncertain and trying to "make sure" You're not totally confident yet — and applying to more programs feels like a way to protect yourself. There's no wrong answer here. But knowing which one you are helps you choose your best number. A helpful framework: Dream, Fit, and Safe One of the best ways to build your graduate school list is to include three categories: Dream Programs These are highly competitive or highly selective. You would LOVE to get in — but you know it's not guaranteed. Fit Programs These are strong matches. Your academic background, experience, and goals align well. Safe Programs These are programs where you have a strong likelihood of admission. You'd still be happy attending — and they reduce anxiety. Now here's the magic: A strong grad application plan includes a mix of all three. That way you avoid the two biggest mistakes applicants make: applying only to the most competitive programs applying randomly without a strategy So… how many programs should you apply to? Let's break it into realistic options. Option 1: Apply to 1–2 programs This is okay if… You are geographically limited (family, job, caregiver responsibilities) You are applying to a very specific program that only a few schools offer You are already connected to a faculty member or advisor You are 100% sure this is the right program for you You have a backup plan if you don't get in This can work. But I'll be honest — the risk is higher. Because even strong applicants get denied sometimes for reasons that have nothing to do with them. Examples include: limited cohort size funding availability faculty capacity too many qualified applicants So if you're applying to only one program, I encourage you to ask: "If I don't get in this cycle… what's my plan B?" If you have a good answer, applying to 1–2 programs can absolutely be a smart choice. Option 2: Apply to 3–4 programs (recommended for most people) This is the "balanced" plan. It works well when: You have limited time to apply You are working full-time You want to submit strong applications instead of rushing You want options, but you don't want overload A 3–4 program plan typically looks like this: 1 Dream 2 Fit 1 Safe If you want a straightforward, smart plan — this is it. Option 3: Apply to 5–6 programs (great if you want more options) This is also a strong approach — especially if: You're applying in a competitive field You're hoping for assistantships or funding You want flexibility in program format (online, hybrid, in-person) You want multiple choices for location or faculty A 5–6 program plan might look like: 2 Dream 2–3 Fit 1 Safe This gives you a strong chance of acceptance and the ability to compare offers. Option 4: Apply to 7+ programs This may be necessary if: You're applying to highly competitive programs (like clinical psych, funded PhDs, top-tier research programs) You're chasing assistantships and want to maximize funding chances You're applying nationally with flexible location But I'll warn you: applying to 7+ programs can quickly become too much. Here's why: Graduate applications aren't like undergrad applications. They usually require: detailed personal statements program-specific essays recommendation letters writing samples resumes/CVs sometimes interviews And each application needs to feel personal and intentional. If you apply to too many programs, the quality can drop — and that can cost you admission. So if you're going beyond 6 programs, be sure you have: a clear timeline support (like a mentor, advisor, coach) and enough bandwidth to write well Here's what most people forget: applications cost money and energy Let's talk about the "invisible cost." Yes — graduate apps can have fees. But the bigger cost is time and emotional energy. Because every program you apply to requires you to: imagine yourself there research faculty and curriculum write about your goals craft your future into words feel the hope and anxiety of "what if?" And that adds up. If you apply to 10 programs and burn out, you may end up submitting 10 weaker applications instead of 4 strong ones. I'd rather see you submit 3 applications you feel proud of than 8 rushed applications you dread. A Director's perspective: what matters more than the number Let me give you the most important advice I can offer as someone who reads applications and supports graduate students every day. The best number of programs to apply to is the number you can apply to WELL. That's it. A strong application feels like: clear goals a strong "why this program?" alignment with curriculum and faculty maturity and readiness polished writing And those things take time. So instead of asking: "How many programs should I apply to?" Try asking: "How many strong applications can I realistically submit in the next 6–10 weeks?" That will guide you to the right number almost every time. My recommendation (and a simple takeaway) If you're still unsure, here's the clearest guidance I can give: Apply to 4 programs if: you're working full-time you want to avoid burnout you want a focused approach Apply to 5–6 programs if: your field is competitive you want to maximize scholarship/assistantship possibilities you want options across format and location Apply to 2–3 programs if: your options are limited by location or lifestyle you're already highly confident and prepared you have a backup plan And if you're applying to 7+ programs, you're not wrong — just make sure you're set up to do it sustainably. One final encouragement If you're listening to this and feeling overwhelmed, I want you to know this: You don't have to have the perfect number. You just need a plan that protects your energy, increases your chances, and keeps you moving forward. Grad school isn't about chasing prestige — it's about choosing a program that fits your life and supports your goals. So yes, apply strategically. But also apply with hope. Because you're not just applying to programs. You're applying to a future you're building on purpose. And that's something to be proud of.
The Art of Grad School: Michael Sevick's Story of Education and Achievement
Embarking on graduate school is more than a simple academic step—it's a deeply personal journey, one that evolves and reshapes your goals, expectations, and life direction. The latest episode of the "Victors in Grad School" podcast welcomes Michael Sevick, Professor Emeritus from the University of Michigan-Flint, to share his inspiring story of growth, perseverance, and transformation through higher education. From his beginnings at what is now Mott Community College to earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Michigan, and ultimately achieving an MFA—the terminal degree in his field—Michael Sevick's trajectory is a testament to resilience and purposeful planning. He didn't take the straightest course: after his associate's degree, he paused his education to pursue music, returning later with renewed commitment to finish his bachelor's and then move into graduate study. A key theme in this episode is the importance of intentionality and adaptability. Michael Sevick discusses applying to several graduate schools, carefully weighing family, work, and personal responsibilities—all while keeping his professional and creative aspirations in focus. His approach underscores the value of aligning educational pursuits with life circumstances and long-term goals. The conversation with Dr. Christopher Lewis pulls back the curtain on the real challenges of graduate education: managing transitions, facing imposter syndrome, and adapting to higher expectations. Michael Sevick shares candid moments of doubt and anxiety—especially as he moved straight from being a student to teaching others. His experience highlights the necessity of support networks, mentorship, and self-advocacy in maintaining balance during demanding times. Listeners will also take away practical advice on time management, perseverance, and leveraging campus resources. Michael Sevick urges students to seek out help, use support systems, and remember that most people you meet in graduate programs genuinely want you to succeed. Whether you're considering graduate school, already on your way, or simply in need of motivation, this episode is packed with valuable lessons and heartfelt encouragement. Michael Sevick's journey reminds us that roadblocks can become stepping stones, and that with the right mindset and support, graduate school can be a profoundly rewarding adventure. Tune in and be inspired by a story of perseverance, community, and lifelong learning. Begin your own journey toward becoming a victor in grad school! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. You know, every week I love being able to talk to you about the journey that you are on. And I call it a journey because every student that's thinking about graduate school and goes on a journey, whether you're at the very beginning and you're just starting to think about this, you've maybe you've applied, maybe you've gotten accepted, maybe you're in graduate school. Throughout this entire process, you're going to be going through a personal journey toward the goals that you've set for yourself. That's why this show exists. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:48]: This show is here to be able to help you to find ways that you can be successful in that graduate school journey. That's why every week I love being able to have different people with different experiences that can talk to you about the journey that they went on. And then you can learn a little bit for yourself and take what you hear, set it aside, doesn't matter, learn from them, and hopefully be able to find some tips, some tools, some tricks, some things that you can do to help you on the journey that you personally will have. Today we have another great guest. Mike Sevik is with us today. And Mike is a professor emeritus from the University of Michigan, Flint. He was an associate professor of art for many years at the University of Michigan, Flint. We're going to be talking to him about his journey from starting at a community college to moving to a bachelor's, to a master's and then to teaching. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:45]: So really excited to be able to have him here and for us to learn from him and his own journey. Mike, thanks so much for being here today. Michael Sevick [00:01:52]: Thanks for having me. I hope this helps. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:54]: Well, I really appreciate you being here. And I'm going to turn the clock back in time. I want to go all the way back. I want to go back to. Let's go back to the beginning in the sense of you started your undergraduate work at Mott Community College. It wasn't called Mott Community College at that time, but. But the equivalent of Mott Community College before you went on and got your Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Michigan. And at some point in that time of being at the University of Michigan, you had a calling. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:24]: There was a calling to you to Continue your education. Because you did get that Bachelor of Fine Arts at BFA and you could have stopped there, could have gone and painted and worked as a painter. But you decided to go and get that terminal degree. And for those of you that don't know in the fine arts area, the Master of Fine Arts degree is a terminal degree. So you went on and you got that mfa. Bring me back to that point where, where you said, where in your head you said to yourself, yes, I'm gonna keep going on. Why did you decide to go on? Why was it a right time to go for graduate school? Michael Sevick [00:02:56]: Yeah, you're correct that I started at Flint Community College, which is now Mott Community College. And that would have been 1970. And I was there for a year or so and left college to pursue other interests. I was in a rock and roll band and decided to do that for a while. But I came from a family of painters. So my grandfather was a painter. He owned Civic Sign Company here in Flint in the 1920s and that. And my father was an artist and my uncle. Michael Sevick [00:03:22]: So I just sort of. You're right. I probably could have always fallen back on do I need school? Do I need education? And that. But at the time, Mott Community College only had a two year program. And so I got my associate's degree, took the time off to pursue other interests. But then in the 80s, I decided to come back to school, to Mott. I needed a few credits in order to transfer. My plan was to go to a larger school that offered a bachelor's degree in fine Arts Arts. Michael Sevick [00:03:53]: So I got my associate's degree right after that. I got accepted into University of Michigan, Ann Arbor's art program. I took my portfolio and all my letters and a lot of energy and sat down with the director there, who was a wonderful man, looked at my work and said, we'd love to have you in our undergrad program. And I was in that program for two years and that. I graduated in 88. And I. Right away I wanted to go to graduate school. Because at that time I was already in my mid-30s. Michael Sevick [00:04:26]: And so I applied to the five different graduates. And I had a family and kids already, the five different schools in my area. I lived in Swartz Creek, which is near Flint. And those five schools, you know, Wayne State and Michigan State and U of M and just where I could commute to. I got accepted to three of them. Luckily, after my. My undergrad one of them, I was only accepted into the master's program. And I wanted the MFA you mentioned the terminal degree. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:04]: I wanted the MFA and to me to spend an extra time in a master's program. I thought I could focus my energy and just, just try to do the mfa. So I took the MFA offer. One is offered different packages. It's like a sports personality I guess. One of them offered an assistants right away and what that was was teaching. I would do my class load but then I also had to teach a certain amount. And those students that I had were the, bless their hearts, they were the freshmen people that are just first coming in. Michael Sevick [00:05:40]: And in Ann Arbor the schools was quite large so the senior faculties could actually choose and pick more designer friendly classes for them to work in. But I was lucky enough to then graduate with my MFA in two years. So 1990 I got out of there with honors and friends and networking and sort of the. I didn't realize it at the time, but now when I look back that was the ladder or the next bridge or the, the steps to the next part of my career which was I had to teach right away because I had all these bills in a family and all that. So I think still my last semester in graduate school I was lucky enough to get a teaching position at Schoolcraft Community College, which is in Livonia and it's kind of a feeder U of M. Luckily they would kind of look after their graduates sometimes and try and direct them into programs that they knew were might be available or needy. And then from, from there I was lucky enough to sort of come back to Flint. There was some substitute offerings, they were just starting their art program. Michael Sevick [00:06:52]: And I was recommended by again the networking thing that I made in graduate connected me to the school craft jobs. The, the jobs at all the other colleges that I worked at until I finally were was able to land a tenured position at U of M Flint, which is what I wanted. All that was my plan. When I went back to get my degree. I didn't want to move, I didn't want to sell my house, I didn't want to leave my wife and kids. Everything had to be threaded like a web. And I can't believe how things worked out almost the way that I sort of planned. Michael Sevick [00:07:27]: When you transition from an undergraduate degree into a graduate degree, there are different expectations, there's different perspectives, there's different ways of learning. And there truly is a transition when you go from undergraduate education into graduate education in those expectations and beyond. So as you made that transition into graduate school, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success? And what did you have to do to maintain that success. Throughout the entire graduate school journey, I worked pretty hard. Michael Sevick [00:07:57]: I made sure that I was kind of indispensable in a way. I didn't know what they needed, but I was ready to do it. Never taught that class, but sure, I'll do some research and I'll teach it. I know a guy who did teach that class and I'm going to call him and ask him some notes or what was his perspective. And I tried to use that. Luckily I had a couple of mentors who were very, very gracious in helping me when I had just anxiety questions. I couldn't believe, you know, I graduated from graduate school and the next semest teaching. And as I'm walking into the class for the first time, I was just going, they're going to find out I don't know what I'm doing and I'm not prepared for this. Michael Sevick [00:08:38]: And the poor kids that I'm going to have to be teaching. And then something kind of clicked when I walked in and they sort of hello, professor, or hello Mr. Sevik. And I was no longer that grad student and I was no longer an undergrad. I wasn't even Mike Sevik anymore. I was professional Professor Mike Saidk, instructor or whatever you want to call it. But that sense of responsibility made me want to do better and do more. But the question you asked about the undergraduate and graduate perspective, it. Michael Sevick [00:09:09]: It is totally different. I remember as an undergrad looking at the graduates in a particular way. That changed when I was a graduate student looking at the undergrad students. And then when I eventually did graduate and became an instructor, I imagine I looked at my graduate students a little bit different as well. The assistantship, the ability to work while I was a graduate student really helped me in that again, that first class. When I'm not a graduate student anymore, I'm an instructor. I'm walking into class. What do I do having that assistantship, even though it was under the. Michael Sevick [00:09:45]: My first year assistant, I was under the. I had a professor that I had to coordinate some of the class and classwork. They did that grading and the heavy lifting and I did the other stuff. But then my second year as a graduate student, a TA colleague and myself, we were given the classes so we didn't have a professor anymore looking over us and that. But there was two of us. So that was. Class was 90, but there was still two of us. And then when I got my first class at schoolcraft, my first set of. Michael Sevick [00:10:18]: I think they gave me three. They were manageable class of 2025. They were all classes that I really liked. A design class, art history class, art appreciation, a drawing class, the beginning classes. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:31]: So as you think back to your graduate school experience and you think about others that are coming behind you, was there anything that you wish you had known before you had started graduate school that would have helped you to find success? Michael Sevick [00:10:47]: I don't know if it would help me necessarily. It would have. I didn't realize you are invited into the program and you can be invited out of the program, which happened. There was four of us that got into the program and the mfa, and three of us made it through the first year, but one did not. And I didn't quite realize the seriousness of, you know, as an undergrad. And they can't really kick you out. You know, I guess you could flunk out or you drop out and all that. But it's very rare that the school says, we're going to ask you to leave. Michael Sevick [00:11:21]: So that brought home that second year. Things got more serious. I realized I probably had passed my probation point, so they weren't going to kick me out. And I was doing pretty good, pretty good stuff. But I didn't know that. So I think one's very lucky to get into a graduate program. And once you're in it, keep that in mind. Be grateful and work real hard and try not to burn bridges. Michael Sevick [00:11:46]: Everybody has people they like and don't like, but that's part of life. And you might have a professor that you don't care for personally, but, boy, I bet you they know their stuff, because they probably wouldn't be where they are at if they didn't. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:01]: Now, also, as you think about graduate school, did you find that there was a defining moment or a turning point in graduate school that shaped your academic or professional journey? Michael Sevick [00:12:13]: Again, I was pretty lucky out of the bat. So there were some awards and some accolades that I got that first semester, and my ego was inflated and probably a little arrogant and all that, but as an artist, as a painter especially, dealing in Ann Arbor is like a little Europe. There's people from all over and there's all kinds of skills. And the guy painting next to me was from China, and the guy across the. The hall was from Russia. And I had a Japanese. Just huge competition. And I think one of the things it did for me was it rose me up to that. Michael Sevick [00:12:51]: You know, you're always questioning yourself. You know, where. Where do I fit in? How good am I? Well, I'm in this level of my education. What does that mean how do I stack up against similar. Similar people? Probably a little more competitive back then than it is now. But like I said, there was only three of us that made it through that program and two finally graduated. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:11]: So talk to me about balance, because, you know, when you're going through graduate school, like you said, you have a family, you've got friends, you've wearing many hats. You're trying to balance being the good student, the graduate assistant. You know, there's lots of things you're trying to balance as you're trying to also be successful in your academics. So how did you balance school, work, family, other personal responsibilities while also being a graduate student in a rigorous program? Michael Sevick [00:13:38]: I think I had a wonderful support team from my wife and my kids and my mom and dad and the networking people that I made along the way, other fellow artists, and that helped a lot. I was always playing as a musician all through graduate school as well. So I was able to earn enough money to survive being a musician, but not to thrive. And at some point, having no health insurance and, and all that, I realized this is not good. So the idea of getting a tenured position someplace down the road really drove that car. But I had a wonderful support group and it, for me, it took a village to get where I am now. I don't know if I could have done it by myself. I probably would have tried. Michael Sevick [00:14:27]: But if one has help and support, even in the smallest ways, take it. I remember my grandmother, when I first started going to College, giving me $1,500. And back then, that was a lot of money, and I felt obligated to pay her back somehow, maybe not with money, but with what I could do. But that's an example. I think people love you. They support you, get their help, take their help, and then pass it on. When you're in that position, remember that and say, you know what? I can help you. This happened to me. Michael Sevick [00:14:58]: So let me. It might, might work for you, it might not, but. But at least you're listening. And I think that dialogue is important. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:04]: I hear from a lot of students that figuring out that time management piece is so critical, especially when you start in graduate school because of the balance and you're having to focus in on the academics, but you're also having to focus in on everything else and making sure that nothing, none of the balls are dropped. So for you, what time management strategies did you put in place to help you be successful? Michael Sevick [00:15:27]: Yeah, the scheduling on all of the different aspects of my life was really important. So I tried to get classes early in the day. I tried to be, make the drive home from Ann Arbor here by afternoon, late afternoon, and compartmentalize things that were important. Like I said, I did have a wonderful support. I do have wonderful support. My wife was able to take some of my duties, running the household or whatever I did and cover that. Anyone I worked for, I was able to kind of, whether it was a painting, I was working, doing commissions. Also if I did a gig, I'd make sure it was on a weekend and it was tried to turn down lesser paying gigs. Michael Sevick [00:16:09]: I thought, I've got a great idea. I'm just not going to pay for play for less money anymore. I'll charge more and, and I'll make all kinds of money. And of course that didn't work out. It was the same with selling my paintings. When they wouldn't sell for 500, I thought, well, I'll just double the price and see if I can sell them for a thousand. What's, what's the difference? And. But then I, I sold a couple. Michael Sevick [00:16:29]: I said, oh, okay, maybe that does make a difference. You know, you're self worth management though. I would imagine most anybody that's in a graduate program probably has a pretty good idea of what it's going to take or what it's taking to be successful. And if you don't maybe talk to someone about helping me organize my time and you probably have programs like that, don't you? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:56]: There are definite resources on campus that can help students to be able to figure that out and to manage that in a better way. And I think every campus has something that's there to hopefully support students in that regard. So all in all, I mean there are resources that are there for students. You have to search them out, you have to ask, you have to advocate for yourself and be willing to say I need help and that's important. Michael Sevick [00:17:20]: I totally agree. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:21]: I guess finally, as you think back to your own graduate school experience, what are some tips that you'd offer other individuals that are thinking about graduate school that would help them find success sooner? Michael Sevick [00:17:32]: Well, you know, like I said, in my case I took some time off. I guess just be careful. If anyone's planning on a hiatus and coming back. I understand life happens, illnesses and successes and opportunities and stuff like that. But if you can avoid those recesses, it does help because postgraduate school is full and you can fill that with a lot. And time is one of those commodities that is not renewable and got so much. So take advantage of it, work hard, work fast, try and do it. If you have to take a break, work with the institution. Michael Sevick [00:18:15]: Because I didn't realize when I was in graduate school, my one of my parents were ill and I didn't realize there were mechanisms for me to take time off but still be a student, still participate. And they're the thing that I learned was they were there for me, for my success. Almost everyone that you encounter wants you to succeed. They're trying to help keep that in mind. And it's a lot easier to take that in and say, oh, you're saying that because you want to help me. I get it. You're not out to crush me or hurt me. It's a positive thing. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:48]: Well, Mike, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for sharing your journey and all of the information that you shared to that you learned in your own experience. And I truly wish you all the best. Michael Sevick [00:19:00]: Vice versa. And to all the graduate students and potential graduate students, enjoy your journey. It's a wonderful, wonderful time. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:08]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
From First-Gen Student to Professor: Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse's Grad School Journey
If you're considering graduate school, feeling uncertain about your career direction, or wondering how to overcome obstacles along the way, the latest episode of Victors in Grad School is an inspiring must-listen. In this candid conversation, Dr. Christopher Lewis welcomes Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse—faculty member at the University of Michigan-Flint and Director of the Inclusive History Project—to share her remarkable journey from first-generation college student to tenured professor. Themes of Resilience and Self-Discovery One of the strongest themes throughout the episode is the importance of self-discovery and adaptability. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse describes how she began her academic journey with aspirations to become an engineer, drawn by the promise of a lucrative career. However, after facing academic challenges and realizing her passion for humanities, she boldly changed her major to Women's Studies with a minor in Native American Studies. Her honest reflection on the embarrassment and fear of changing majors—and the eventual pride in pursuing a path she loved—serves as a powerful reminder that the undergraduate years are a time for self-discovery. As Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse puts it, "undergrad is really about self-discovery and figuring out what you are passionate about and what you're good at." Finding Your 'Why' and Keeping Education a Priority The podcast explores the critical importance of understanding your motivation, or "why," when pursuing graduate education. Facing academic probation early on, Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse shares how establishing her goals helped her prioritize her studies over distractions. She emphasizes the necessity of delayed gratification, citing how sacrifices made in the present can lead to future rewards. For anyone balancing work, school, and life, her advice resonates: "To do well and achieve at a high level, education can't be your side hustle. It needs to be your primary focus." Mentorship, Support, and Building Community A standout lesson is the value of seeking help and building a support network. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse encourages students to engage with faculty, campus resources, and mentors—even those who may not share similar backgrounds. She credits her success to mentors who pushed her with compassion and honesty, reminding listeners that real growth comes from accountability and empathy. Navigating Change and Overcoming Challenges From moving across states, adapting to new cultures, and overcoming imposter syndrome as a first-generation student, Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse shares how each experience built the resilience necessary for graduate school and beyond. Her candid stories about culture shock, isolation, and finding her community in Michigan are both relatable and motivating for anyone facing similar transitions. Final Takeaway This episode of Victors in Grad School offers invaluable insights on overcoming setbacks, embracing change, and building meaningful connections. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse's journey is a testament to persistence and the lasting rewards of pursuing a path that aligns with both passion and purpose. If you're navigating your own educational journey, tune in for encouragement, practical advice, and inspiration to keep going—no matter where you start or what challenges you face. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:00:08]: Success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week, I love being able to talk to you about the journey that you're on. And it is a journey. Each person that is thinking about graduate school will go through a different experience and will be on their own journey as that leads them to a specific program, a specific degree, and then beyond the program into the world of work and what you plan to do with that degree itself. And every week, I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can share some of the journeys that they've been on, whether they are currently in graduate school, graduated a while back, or whatever their journey was. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:02]: But each person can share with you something a little bit different. So today I'm really excited to be able to introduce you to a new guest. Dr. Lisa Laperouse is with us today. And Dr. Laparouse is a faculty member at the University of Michigan, Flint, but she's also also the director of the Inclusive History Project at the University of Michigan, Flint. And she has her own graduate school journey that led her from being in California to Arizona to Michigan and being here at the University of Michigan, Flint. And I'm really excited for her to be able to reflect back and share some of her own experiences with us today. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:43]: Dr. Laperouse, thanks so much for being here today. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:01:46]: Thank you so much for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:48]: So I want to take you back in time and I want to go back because I know that you did your undergraduate degree at the University of California, Davis. And at some point during that time at UC Davis, you made a decision. You made a decision because you were getting a Bachelor of Arts degree in Women's Studies with a minor in Native American Studies. And at some point you made a decision to keep going and to go on further for a graduate degree. Bring me back to that point and what was going through your head as you were making those decisions? Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:02:20]: Well, let me give you a little bit of background information. So I'm a first generation college student. And so the idea was sold to me early on. In elementary school, we went to Mott Field where they have NASA Aerospace, and they constantly said, if you went to college, you'd make a lot of money. So in fifth grade, I was like, sign me up. And I was very Impressed with my mock fields, I was like, I'm going to be an engineer. Engineers make great money. And so that was my thought process through middle school, through high school, until I went to college. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:02:55]: I went to college and I was a high performer at unfortunately a low performing school. So what that means is I did not have the best academic preparation for university life. And I think I started out having this idea of, well, you know, I played sports, I was class president, you know, all I have to do is go to school. So this is going to be easy. In my first semester I was on academic probation and I quickly had to change up my study habits and my focus because I thought, oh, this is so embarrassing, I'm the first to go and I'm going to be the first to get kicked out. So part of that though was I was still interested in pursuing engineering. And engineering requires you to take a lot of advanced math courses. And as a high schooler, I had the option. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:03:51]: My school did not offer calculus. If you wanted to take calculus, you had to be bused to a different school at 7 o' clock in the morning before school actually started. And I was class president and I had the option to take the leadership class with my friends or calculus. And I made the decision to hang out with my friends in leadership rather than calculus. So the first time I ever saw calculus was in a quarter system. So U of M Flint is, is on a semester system. A quarter system changes classes every about seven weeks. That is not how you want to experience calculus for your first time. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:04:28]: There were a lot of tears, a lot of office hours, and by my second semester I had realized that I can continue down this pathway, but it was going to be very difficult. I was rocking these humanities, I was doing really well and we'd have to read like seven books a semester. And I thought, well, this is going to be embarrassing. I told everybody it was going to be an engineer. I had the T shirt, but I ended up needing to change my major and then I changed it to Women and Gender Studies. What's now Women and Gender Studies was gender studies then. And to be honest with you, I didn't know what other job there would be other than becoming a professor with that job. So. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:05:13]: And I also was embarrassed that I had to change my major. And I had told everyone I was going to be this great engineer. So now I said if I tell them I'm going to become a professor without really having any idea what I was talking about. I thought that would be acceptable in my grandfather who was very Important to me. I grew up for the majority of my first 15 years of life with my grandparents. His response was, well, that's not too shabby. So I got the seal of approval to pursue that. So my process was, okay, I need to go to graduate school and become a professor. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:05:48]: But again, I really didn't know what that meant. And also at the time that I was studying undergrad, this was the time that affirmative action was being challenged. Ethnic studies, any type of branches out of history that wasn't just U.S. history were being challenged, like the validity of those. And so I was also thinking about job prospects. Was there going to be a department available to me to work? And so when I went into my master's program, which was at the University of Arizona, it was a joint program between Mexican American studies and public health. And then again, there was still challenges about the utility of a Mexican American studies degree. So when I decided to go for my PhD, I decided to go into a more traditional, direct relationship between the, the DEGR and an employment opportunity. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:06:45]: So I went into public health. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:47]: Every person goes on when they're thinking about going to graduate school. They, they go through their own journey to determine where do I want to go, what do I want to do, what type of field do I want to study? Kind of what you were talking about. And you ended up at the University of Arizona. So talk to me a little bit about that journey for yourself. What was going through your head as you were looking at different programs and trying to determine what would be the best fit and what made the University of Arizona the best fit for you? Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:07:13]: So I think the undergrad is really about self discovery and figuring out what are you really passionate about and what are you good at. And I had taken a special elective course with somebody that was in public health. I didn't even know that existed. I thought the only way to study health was to become a doctor. And I was not interested in that. I am something that's called a sympathetic vomiter. If you vomit, I'm going to vomit. I have a very weak stomach. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:07:45]: I just knew that I was not cut out for that. But learning about myself, learning about history, learning about my community, really was exciting to me. I was very interested to that. And that work I would complete first. And so that's some of the things you want to look for is what are you gravitating towards, what are you doing really well in school? What do you leave to the side because you're like, oh, this is agonizing. And that may mean you Know, unfortunately, changing your major, but the benefit of going to college is that you do get to pick your career. Like for me, most of my family do jobs because they, that's what they have to do to pay the bills. I have the privilege of doing something not only to pay the bills, but something I enjoy and get fulfillment out of. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:08:32]: So when I was making that transition, I applied to both PhD programs and master's programs and I was pretty defeated. How I decided to go to Arizona was I only got accepted to one program, so it was an easy choice and I had a very good gpa. But I think for undergrads that are thinking about graduate school, something to think about is PhD programs have really small acceptance. They accept cohorts, and a large cohort is 10 to 15 people. And they're mostly going to select, I would say probably 90% of them, if not more, will select somebody that already has a Master's. So it's important to look at the Master's programs as well and things that align with your service, things that align with your grades and any type of clubs that you did, because then they can see that you have this outstanding interest in that area for your graduate school. So for me, I had done an honors thesis in preparation to try and get accepted into a graduate program, knowing that this would give me some research experience so that I would be a more attractive candidate and hopefully get a position as a research assistant in graduate school. How I learned about the Mexican American Studies program at the University of Arizona was I was on campus. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:09:53]: I used to hang out on campus all the time and there was a poster on a bulletin board and it was not well publicized. And so they were actually quite surprised to see an out of state student applied to their position. And I was part of their first graduating class and it was a great fit. But some of the things that I did consider that some people may want to also think about is I did know that I wanted to go to graduate school. I had talked to a lot of people about it and there were lots of people that told me that they planned to go back to graduate school. But I noticed that they were five and 10 years out and still hadn't did that. And I was like, I don't want to be in that situation. Also, I was very cognizant of, unfortunately my parents did not qualify for school loans. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:10:41]: So all of my education was funded by myself, myself taking out school loans, scholarships. So I was very aware of after six months those school loans were going to kick in and I was going to have to start paying those back. And I didn't want to get a job and start a lifestyle that my income would support and then not want to go back to being a starving student again. So I was like, let me just stay a poor student all the way through and just get this done early on and not promise myself I'm going to do it and then never complete that goal. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:15]: And then after that master's degree, you went on and you continued to get Another degree, a PhD in health behavior and Health Education at the University of Michigan. That's a far distance away from where you did your bachelor's and your master's degree. And you went from warmer weather to very cold weather in the winters and having to adjust and really push yourself out of a comfort zone of being in an area where you probably were more comfortable and you knew kind of the culture and you. And you felt a part of the culture where then you moved to a brand new area. So talk to me about that decision process and how you ended up at the University of Michigan. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:11:58]: So when I was an undergrad, I did not graduate with high honors. And so I made it a personal mission that I was going to graduate with honors in my master's program, and I did graduate with a 4.0. However, they did not have high honors at my university, which I thought I was going to get the cum laude distinction, but the school didn't allow that. I should say, too, it's so important to have that high gpa because I did not test well on my gre, my graduate record exam. Same thing with the sat. And we know that one of the highest predictors of those scores is your area zip code. So it has to do a lot with the resources that are available to an individual. So, you know, I think I faced a lot of mental challenges, emotional challenges, about whether or not I fit in a university, because I just didn't have the same pedigree or the same experiences as others. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:13:06]: And it did take me having to think things through and remember that, no, I'm the one that's sitting in those classes. I'm the one that's doing those exams that I also deserve a place there. But that has remained an ongoing challenge. You know, I'm currently, I'm the only tenured Latina professor that I know on our campus, and that's a lonely space to be in. And that comes with some challenges. If I start getting heated in a meeting and are they going to stereotype me as the spicy Latina or whatever? So. So I got a 4.0. So what that meant was I applied to the top five public health programs in the country and I was accepted into Michigan. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:13:48]: And it's, I'll be honest with you, I only got into one program and that was U of M. And so I'm a religious person. I was like, okay, God has directed me. He only gave me one option for my master's program and one option for my PhD. And so I had only been to the snow once in my life before moving to Michigan. I didn't own a stitch of black clothing because you don't wear black when you live in Arizona. I only had tank tops and flip flops and shorts. So I was completely ill prepared to be in Michigan. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:14:23]: Also living on the west coast. I'm from the Bay Area. There's a lot of ethnic diversity. Did not that experience that so much in Michigan in Ann Arbor, even though Ann Arbor is a large campus. So that was also challenging in my PhD program too. That was the first time that I had ever been around a lot of students of color that were wealthy and were not first generation students. So it took me some time to kind of find my people in my support network that I had some commonalities. And there were actually a group of us Latinas from California that were first gen that hung out and kind of supported each other. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:15:04]: But yeah, it was definitely a culture shock. So I mean everything I remember when I, when I got here, everybody was driving American made cars. You know, because you have Ford, you have GM here and back in the Bay Area everybody drove Hondas. And I was like, where are all the Hondas? Where are the people with the piercings? Where's all the colored hair? Like I was just so used to a different way of life. And so I think that can be an unexpected challenge of how hard it's going to be to kind of integrate yourself into a new kind of environment. And so that does take getting outside your comfort zone and meeting people, joining clubs, getting out of the house and trying to find your community so that you do have that support. Because fortunately for me, as much as my family wanted to be supportive, they had never gone through the experiences that I had in college. So it was really hard for them to wrap their head around what the challenges were or why I was so upset about not doing well on the exam. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:16:07]: And actually my mom had asked me to leave college a couple of times because I called home crying saying it was so hard. And she was like, if this is going to be this distressing to you, Then maybe you should leave. And I thought, oh my God, what bad advice. Like I'll suck it up, you know, so it's difficult, but it's not impossible. Find your people. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:25]: So you found success in your master's degree, your doctorate degree. And as you moved into those different places, there are different expectations and different expectations from being an undergraduate student to being a master's student, to being a doctoral student. Talk to me about those transitions for yourself. And as you think back to the transition to the University of Arizona, the University of Michigan, and to the different programs and the different expectations of faculty, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success as you transitioned into the program? And what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout the entirety of those programs? And it may be different at both the master's and doctoral level. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:17:09]: I think the very first thing I had to do, especially after that first semester being on academic program probation, is understanding my why. Why was I there? Why was this important? What was that long term goal and making sure that my education was my priority. It couldn't be socializing with my friends, it couldn't be. Like I said at the time, there was affirmative action being challenged. It wasn't sleeping on the steps and doing the hunger strike, it was going to rallies and stuff. But my primary goal was to graduate. And so that really meant prioritizing and making sacrifices to ensure that that was always at the forefront of what I was doing. And I would have to say that that was the case all throughout. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:17:55]: You know, when I had a lot of friends that didn't go to college and they were buying fancy cars and they always had money and I was like trying to scrape together 20 bucks to buy a pizza. And I thought, wow, like they have these great lifestyles. What am I doing? And you really have to accept, accept delayed gratification because eventually the tables did turn where that nice sports car, well, they're still driving it 10 years later and you know, they took a lot longer to move out of their parents homes. And so the fruits of your labor do show up, but it's not necessarily as quickly as you'd like. And so coming to terms with that, I think is also important for myself. I've lived across the country for a very long time from my family. And I had to again understand for myself why that sacrifice was necessary to keep going. Because it's hard. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:18:57]: You know, I missed all the birthdays, all the big celebrations, but again, I had specific goal that I had in mind and I kept that as A priority. And that's not to say I never went home, but it wasn't the same as living in the same city or the same state where you can go home for the barbecues and all this other stuff. You know, there were a lot of things that I did miss. So I think the delayed gratification, I think continuing to prioritize your education as first as a faculty person, I know a lot of students have to work full time. I had to work also, but I worked on campus. I worked jobs that were, I would say, complimentary to my work schedule. Because to do well and to achieve like at a high level, education can't be your side hustle. It needs to be your primary focus. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:19:48]: And sometimes it's not the right time to go to school. I'm not saying that you're not cut out for school because if you would have looked at my profile in high school, child of a teenage mother, you know, I had all the indicators that I would not be a college, let alone a PhD, somebody with a PhD. So I think also you have to find the self esteem in yourself to keep going and the courage because there will be people, instructors included, that'll say that maybe you're not cut out for this, but you have to work with the tenacity and a resilience to continue to push through. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:25]: So as you think about your graduate degree and you think about the different degrees that you received along the way, you started in one area, you ended up in public health. And as you reflect back on your undergrad, your grad, your doctoral degrees, talk to me about the interplay with those degrees. Because not everybody, when they go and get an undergraduate degree is going to get a job specifically in that specific area. You may end up in a very different place than where you began. So talk to me about that journey for yourself and the learning and how it built upon each other to where you ended in teaching in the area that you're teaching now. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:21:06]: I really kind of think as an undergraduate education as the mechanism to help you identify credible information and to really be a critical thinker. This is the time where you really learn how to identify sources of information and evaluate them to figure out are there motives behind the person that is advertising this or making this statement. So you become a critical thinker and those critical thinking systems skills are applicable in any type of position. I feel like in the master's program, now that you have identified where to find information, you have a better command of knowledge in your specific areas. So then you can start to really Craft important questions about the gaps that remain there, and start to move science forward by pursuing new kind of pathways to understanding certain phenomena. And, you know, for people that have historically been excluded or underrepresented in universities, their voices, their perspectives are important because we may not have heard them before. So I think the first thing is about kind of discovery and finding information. The second part in the master's is really about beginning to start to ask our own questions. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:22:30]: And then in the PhD, I think it's about creating knowledge. It's not just asking the questions, but now pursuing those questions and helping to find answers, moving science again forward and challenging existing thought processes. So with the inclusive history project, one of the things that we do is there are narratives that are put forward and, you know, they're evidence based. But one of the things that we do is say, well, whose voices are represented and whose voices are missing? And is this a comprehensive understanding of these events or are there perspectives that are missing and maybe can give us a better and more nuanced understanding? So again, it's continuing to be a critical thinker, but it's also learning how to use the skills and apply them to challenge or to expand what we know. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:26]: Now, as you think about graduate students or individuals thinking about becoming a graduate student, and you think back to your, your own experiences, what are some tips that you might offer others that are considering graduate school, no matter what they are going into, that would help them to find success sooner? Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:23:44]: Ask for help. That is what faculty are here for. And as faculty go on these retreats and we think very deeply about the courses that we teach, the content, the textbooks, I think students would be really surprised how much thought and time goes into planning these things. And when we've gone to these retreats and they ask what inspires you? Everybody mentions students. So most of us do this job because we really find it fulfilling and we like to work with students. And so I know for myself, I was very intimidated being in the academic environment. I didn't speak in class until my junior year of undergrad because I was so terrified of saying something dumb. Now we have a hard time keeping me quiet in any kind of situation. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:24:33]: But you cannot do this alone. You need to have support. And sometimes your friends or your peers are not the best support for you, because sometimes it's the blind leading the blind. And so it's so important to get to know your resources on campus as well as your faculty. And don't wait. It's so much easier for faculty to help you when you approach them sooner rather than later. And, you know, for myself, I had a lot of life happen to me when I was in school. And so, you know, find that person who's not just going to be a cheerleader and tell you everything's great, but somebody find a good mentor that is going to be honest with you, hold you to accountability, but also do that with empathy and compassion. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:25:22]: And related to that, I think that I was under the impression that to find a good mentor, the mentor had to be similar to me. They had to be a woman. They had to be, you know, Latina. And I joke about this, but I've had mentors and I've had tormentors. And the tormentors were people that really just broke me down and said, you know, these are all the things you're doing wrong. And it was really defeating. And one of my very best mentors was Dr. Woody Neighbors at U of M, and he's an African American male. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:25:58]: And so I say this to say, don't discount somebody just because they don't share the same background as you. Find somebody that is invested in your success. But again, that's going to hold you to a high standard, because those relationships will really help you when you do encounter challenges. And that is inevitable in the PhD program. Sometimes you have people that have been successful all the way through. They rock undergrad, they rock their Masters program, and then they get into the PhD program, and all of a sudden they're starting to have some challenges. And that can be really emotionally tolling because you see yourself as this very successful person. And so, again, it's really important to have that support to make sure that you just don't go, don't complete your degree, because that happens a lot, too. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:26:46]: So being connected, I think, is so core to being well. And I know everybody loves the online environment, but making the commitment to go to campus to be involved in different things, you're only going to be in school for a small blip of your life. And so it's worth the investment, because this is where in my PhD program, I met so many people that they're writing books. I mean, they are doing fabulous things. I can use them for job references, job leads. You never know where that relationship could possibly take you. So it's worth investing that time and effort beyond just the classroom. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:25]: Well, Elise, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. And it is definitely something that I think that everybody can learn from, because all of us go through these ups and downs, and it's kind of a roller coaster as you go through graduate school and hopefully it's more ups than downs. But there are always going to be those peaks and valleys and you shared some of your own as you went through your own experience. But I truly want to say thank you for sharing your journey today and I wish you all the best. Dr. Lisa Lapeyrouse [00:27:53]: Thank you so much. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:27:55]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgradofficemflint.edu.
From Community College to PhD: Dr. George White's Inspiring Academic Journey
Are you considering graduate school or seeking inspiration for your academic journey? This week's episode of the "Victors in Grad School" podcast is a must-listen. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan-Flint, the show features a rich conversation with Dr. George White, Professor of Strategic Management and Director of the Doctorate in Business Administration Program at UM-Flint. The episode opens with Dr. George White sharing his unique educational path, beginning as the first in his family to attend college. Coming from a rural, modest background, his story starts with working night shifts and attending a community college in Alabama. He highlights how determination and hard work paved his way to the University of Alabama and later, a life-changing exposure to Asian history and culture. A key theme of the podcast is the role of inspiration and mentorship. Dr. George White recalls the professors who encouraged his academic curiosity and opened doors to opportunities abroad, including studying in Taiwan and teaching English in Asia. This global perspective led him to pursue a law degree, and later, an LLM in International Commercial Law. Throughout the interview, listeners hear about the importance of having a clear plan and passion for your studies. Dr. George White emphasizes that success in graduate school isn't about being the smartest person in the room — it's about hard work, dedication, and being genuinely excited about what you're learning. He also opens up about his experiences consulting and teaching in China, which inspired him to further pursue an MBA and a PhD in International Business. The episode is filled with actionable advice for prospective graduate students: develop a five- or ten-year plan, engage with your professors, and choose a program that aligns with your interests and career goals. Time management and perseverance are repeatedly highlighted as essential ingredients for success. If you're seeking inspiration from someone who's charted a truly international, interdisciplinary career — leveraging degrees in history, law, and business — this episode is sure to motivate you. Tune in to "Victors in Grad School" and learn how passion, planning, and relentless hard work can help you thrive on the path to academic and professional achievement. Ready to be inspired? Listen now and prepare to embark on your own journey as a victor in grad school! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to the Victors in Grad School. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:03]: Where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week we have an opportunity. We have an opportunity to work together to help you define success in this journey that you're on. And it is a journey. Every person that is thinking about graduate school, that is in graduate school, has a unique journey that you will follow for yourself as you move forward and through that experience. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:42]: And though it may be unique, there are commonalities that most every person goes through as they go through that graduate school journey that you can start planning for right now. And that's what this podcast is all about. It's all about helping you to find ways to be able to be successful in this journey and find tips, tactics, et cetera, things that can help you to find success sooner. That's why every week I love being able to have different people, new people on, to share their own experience. And today we have another great guest. Dr. George White is with us. And George is a professor at the University of Michigan, Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:24]: He's a professor of Strategic Management and the director of the Doctorate in Business Administration Program here at the University of Michigan, Flint. And he's at a unique path through his own education that has led him to where he is today. So we're going to be talking to him about his own journey. George, thanks so much for being here today. Dr. George White [00:01:40]: Hi, Chris. Thanks for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:41]: Well, I really am excited to have you here today, and I know that your journey has been one that is unique, and you have had many curves along the path. So I want to take you back in time. And I know you did your undergraduate work at the University of Alabama and you got a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. And at some point, either in your undergraduate work or after, when you started working and getting some experience, you made a decision to go back to graduate school and to get a law degree. And I'm really interested, first and foremost, for us to talk about this. And then I know you went beyond that, but bring me back to the point in which you determined for yourself that graduate school was the next step. What was going through your head? Dr. George White [00:02:25]: Yeah, so, oh, boy, it's very long journey for me. What happened was I'm essentially the very first kid in my immediate family to go to college. So I started off in community College at a very nice community college in Hanceville, Alabama, near Coleman, Alabama, called Hanceville Community College. And so I went there part time. I worked full time like many of the students here at um, Flint do anyhow, and actually work night shift and at a technology company producing chipboards. And then that company was paying for my education, so I would go to school during the day. So I'd get up at like 6 in the morning, study, go to school, maybe study some more, hop in the car, go work and repeat that. And I wasn't sleeping a whole lot during that time. Dr. George White [00:03:14]: So that sort of was my gateway into college. And just going to community college was an eye opener for me. But what happened was at a certain point I decided I wanted to be a full time student. After going through the grind of working and trying to do that and go to school part time, my family told me I could go full time to school if I wanted to do that. So I'll never forget when I applied to be accepted in the University of Alabama. When I got that acceptance letter, it was a big deal because I grew up in a very rural part of Alabama and actually was raised on a chicken farm in East Texas. So basically a farming family wasn't exposed that much to higher education. And here I am going off to the University of Alabama. Dr. George White [00:03:55]: My first year at Alabama, I just took classes in general. I was a history major. But what happened my senior year, I took a few courses in Asian history. I'll never forget. I took a course by a professor, his name was Lee Butler, he's actually a graduate from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who was a professor in the history department there. And it was on Japanese culture and coming from basically the backwoods of Alabama, you know, being a Southern redneck that really taking that course, we read books on architecture in Japan. We learned about aikabuno, you know, flower arranging, sumo wrestling. That class really was, was my first point of entry into learning about the rest of the world. Dr. George White [00:04:36]: And then I took another course from a professor who became my mentor, named Dr. Ronald Roble, on Korean history. And I knew nothing about Korea until I took that course. And these were during my senior year at Alabama. So what happened was I became very fascinated by Asia and just the rest of the world in general. And Dr. Robol, who I got to know quite well. I worked very hard, tried to do well in his course. Dr. George White [00:05:01]: He basically encouraged me to stay at Alabama and become a graduate student there. He was the director of their Asian studies program. And so I stayed there, worked under him became as a teaching assistant in the classes he was teaching and took classes in Asian studies and started studying Chinese language. Then what happened was I ended up receiving a scholarship to go study Chinese at Fengji University, which is in Taichung, Taiwan. And I did that for about a year. And studying abroad was very interesting to me. I learned quite a bit. But what I really enjoyed was going out. Dr. George White [00:05:34]: And there's lots of opportunities in Taiwan that teach English as a second language. You can actually make a lot of money doing that. So I started doing quite a bit of that. I taught at a night school in Taichung, and then I taught at a private kindergarten in the morning and was making a lot of money. I had, like, a little penthouse I was renting in downtown Taichung. And it was a really good life. And what happened was I was there on the scholarship, but one of my employers wanted me to essentially convert my visa status from a student to, like, a working visa. So to make a very long story short, I ended up traveling abroad to the Philippines. Dr. George White [00:06:10]: Bumped into my wife the first day I was in the Philippines. Left the Philippines, went back to Taiwan, realized it's going to be very difficult to get her to Taiwan because of the immigration policy. So I basically moved to the Philippines. I'd saved up a lot of money. I had this little desk in my room of the apartment I was renting. I used to shove all of my cash in that drawer. I didn't even have a bank account there. And I remember just taking all that money I'd made and I moved to the Philippines. Dr. George White [00:06:38]: And basically I became a beach bum in the Philippines for a little while. So got married to my wife. That's what triggered, you know, when I was in the Philippines, I'm like, I have to do something with my life, you know, I mean, who's going to hire somebody with a bachelor's degree in Asian history? And I wanted to continue on. I was very interested in learning. I enjoyed the university environment, and I wanted to continue with my education. So I wasn't good at math at that point. I haven't even thought about business. So I did what a lot of individuals do that are more qualitatively experienced and have skill sets in that area. Dr. George White [00:07:11]: I applied to law school, and my LSAT score for law school wasn't really that great. So there's a school here in Michigan called Cooley Law School in Lansing, which sort of has a very different admissions policy than most other law schools. They usually. They bring in a lot of students, but then they weed them out. You know, it's a very rigorous law school to go through. And what happened was they. They brought. I got accepted to Coley Law School. Dr. George White [00:07:37]: And that was my. My only opportunity at that point in time. Listed at some other law schools like Syracuse and other universities, because I had interesting background. But I ended up going to Cooley and I studied as a law student there and I concentrated in international law because that was at that point in time, I knew I wanted to do something international in nature. Then what happened was, in law school, I was on the journal, the editorial board for the Cooley Law Journal, which is sort of a prestigious thing in law school. And you get to learn how to edit, and it's research oriented. There was a summer course called Scholarly Writing that I took as an elective course. And I took that course and I wrote a paper and the paper was on trade in Southeast Asia. Dr. George White [00:08:24]: And I took the paper after I was finished with the class. I did very well in there because it was very interesting to me. I loved to do research and writing. So I was very intrinsically motivated. And when I went through that class, I knew it was something I really enjoyed. And what happened was I took that paper that I wrote for that class and I got it published in an international law journal. And I knew at that time, this is something I can do, and it's something I love to do. And so then one law degree wasn't enough. Dr. George White [00:08:51]: So I went and actually I went to Emory Law School and worked on an LLM, an advanced law degree in International Commercial Law. And then what happened was, when I was at Emory, this is right around the time when China was joining the WTO, back around 2000, 2001, I did not feel like I'd finished what I had started out to do in Taiwan. So I wanted to get back to Asia and sort of finish what I started there. So I started looking around for jobs to teach law in China. And one thing led to another and a major university hired me to go over to China and spend a year there. I ended up spending two years there, but they hired me to go there and to teach international law as a visiting professor. And that's how it all started. Going back to my bachelor's degree, I found something very fascinating and I wanted to continue with that. Dr. George White [00:09:41]: I really enjoyed learning. I enjoyed the university environment, and I was fascinated by Asia and just international stuff, and I wanted to keep continuing down that path. And then when I got the law school and I took this course on scholarly writing where I could Bring my passion into that. That's what really triggered everything for me. And I knew that's what I wanted to do moving forward with my career. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:04]: Now a law degree is a terminal degree. You went on and got an LLM, but then a few years later you decided to keep going and getting both an MBA as well as then going and getting a PhD, another terminal degree. Dr. George White [00:10:19]: I got my MBA at the same time as I was working on my PhD, which is sort of rare. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:24]: So talk to me about that and what made you decide that you wanted to continue your education to get those additional degrees beyond the terminal degrees you already had? Yeah. Dr. George White [00:10:34]: Okay. So very practical. I was in China at the time, you know, I, I accepted that gig to go and teach at Habenomy University again. It was right around the time when China was opening up to the rest of the world. They were much more free market oriented than they currently are. I mean, they were following the Deng Xiaoping framework of opening up and trying to develop relationship with the Western world. So there were lots of opportunities at the time for foreigners with backgrounds like myself and interests like myself to consult and do things. So what happened was I was not in Beijing or Shanghai. Dr. George White [00:11:10]: I was in a secondary city, a little town of only 8 million people called Shijiazhuang, which is just south of Beijing. And there were lots of opportunities because of my unique background and skillset. So I started consulting and I was consulting with law firms as a foreign expert. And then I ended up being approached by development zones to consult with them and help act as a liaison between the Chinese government and foreign companies that were coming in and investing in China. And I started basically backed into doing a lot of business consulting. And at that time I did not have any formal business background or education whatsoever. I was learning by doing, essentially. So I had a friend that was a former professor of mine at Thomas Cooley at Cooley Law School. Dr. George White [00:11:54]: At that time he had moved to University of Miami, but we stayed in touch. And so about once a month he would contact me and we would talk because he was doing a lot of research on China and then I was doing research on China. So he would call me up about once a month and we would chat. And I told him, you know what, I'm doing all this consulting now in China and I don't have this formal education, so I feel like I need to go and get an MBA or something. And at that time I had already started publishing a good bit. And he goes, george, George, you ought to think about going and obtaining a Ph.D. you know, joining a Ph.D. program in international business. Dr. George White [00:12:28]: International business, really? He goes, yes, all your research is related to international business, because I've been publishing quite a bit on international trade, foreign direct investment, and different issues related to companies operating in Asia. So I'll never forget I studied for the GMAT, which is the entrance examination for MBAs and most business graduate degrees. I studied in a library in northern China during the winter, like the winter we have right here in Michigan where there is no heat. I'll never forget that. And I actually took the GMAT in Beijing, China. And then I applied to some PhD programs and there was this new doctoral program that had just started up in international business at University of Texas at El Paso. And they accepted me. I'll never forget, forget when I received the letter and they actually called me when I was in China. Dr. George White [00:13:17]: When that happened, it changed my life. And so I ended up going off to spent two years in China. And after that I transitioned into the PhD program at UT El Paso, where I also earned my MBA as a general MBA in management. It was an extension of what I was already doing. I mean, I had started doing a lot of business consulting in mainland China, and I had no formal background or education. And so I was interested in learning and getting some formal education in business administration. And I ended up going and working on my PhD and then also my MBA. And to this very day, 20 years later, I'm still using leveraging my legal background and my interest in Asia in my research and what I teach and do here at Michigan Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:01]: Now, with every degree, when you transition into those degrees, there is a transition because the way in which you're educated at the bachelor's level is different than at the master's level, is different than in law school, is different than in a PhD. Every type of school is a little bit different. Every type of academic area is going to be a little bit different. So talk to me about some of the things that you learned as you made those transitions through the different degrees that you went into and what you had to do to be able to first transition into graduate school. And what did you have to do to continue throughout the entire graduate school experience to maintain that success? Dr. George White [00:14:42]: Yeah, I mean, and this is something I talk to. I'm the director of our doctoral program here at the School of Management at Michigan Flint. So I'm always talking to students about this on a regular basis. You know, I think you need to have a plan. You know, I think it's the first thing you need to really have a Plan. I think the most successful students. What made me successful, I had a passion for what I wanted to do. I mean, I knew what I wanted to do and I was determined to do it no matter what. Dr. George White [00:15:07]: Okay, second thing, you need to have a plan. You need to have like a 5 and 10 year plan. Why am I doing this? How is this going to get me from point A to point B? And then what am I going to do? And you got to be very proactive and dedicated. I mean, for example, in all of my courses, I remember my doctoral program, my doctoral program in the law school as well, pretty much all my courses. And I was never the smartest student in any of those classes. And I'm definitely not the smartest faculty member here at the School of management neither. But one thing I can say, I worked very hard. On Fridays, I would be up studying, working on Saturdays. Dr. George White [00:15:41]: Whatever I had to do to be successful, I would make that happen. So I was very proactive. All the faculty knew me very well in all the programs. Starting my bachelor's all the way through, I was very proactive, interacting with the faculty members, making sure I'm doing the right thing in the classes. How can I improve what I'm doing? I was very interested in learning and I had a passion for what I was working on and a plan of why am I doing what I'm doing? Okay, I think that's very important. Also, just generally, you need to be excited about what you're working on. You know, when you select a graduate degree, I mean, I understand the practicality of choosing something that's going to help you to get from point A to point B, whether it's getting a promotion or, or moving in a new area, whatever that is. But you got to have some passion for what you're doing. Dr. George White [00:16:25]: I mean, at the end of the day, it's a grind. Graduate school is not easy. You got to be dedicated. It takes a lot of time and effort. You're paying a lot of money for whatever degree it is, and you got to be able to wake up in the morning and be motivated or it's just going to be much more difficult for you to be successful. So that's really what made me like, I did not enjoy law school. I did not have any fun in law school. Right. Dr. George White [00:16:48]: That's why I'm not a law professor. But, but I did enjoy some of the subjects that the law school had to offer, and I gravitated towards those and that's what helped me get through it. For example, like the other Graduate degrees were very different. I really had more passion for them. But at the end of the day, you got to have a passion for what you're doing. I mean, life is too short to be miserable and you got to have a plan. I think just throwing yourself into a degree program with not having a clear vision of what you plan to do, I don't think is really the right approach. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:17]: I know you are a faculty member, you are a administrator. You've worked in higher education now for a number of years here at the University of Michigan, Flint. And I guess as you think back to the education that you received in all the different facets of the education, talk to me about how those different degrees and the different experiences that you've had have helped you to do the work that you're doing on a daily basis. Dr. George White [00:17:40]: That's a complex question. First of all, I feel very blessed. Position I'm in is I've worked well. My wife has to remind me that I work very hard to get where I'm at. There's this old saying, you need to run scared to be successful. And I've been running scared, meaning I've been working very hard, never thinking I'm doing enough. How can I constantly improve what I'm doing? I've been doing that for a very long time and I'm still doing it to today, even though I'm a full professor and directing a doctoral program, etc. Etc. Dr. George White [00:18:08]: But for me, I get this question a lot from various individuals, students in our program. Individuals are out in industry. You know, you have a law degree and you have a bachelor's in history. You know how in the world you become a professor of business. For me, it all sort of fits together. For example, my research today is on how companies strategize, you know, develop in and execute strategy in Asia. And I look at that from a legal perspective, I've sort of become like an expert in the international business and strategic management community on how the legal environment has an influence on foreign companies, multinationals operating in Asia. So I have really worked hard to try to leverage my interest and background in Asia. Dr. George White [00:18:53]: I go over the Asia quite a bit. You know, I mean, I. I'm a visiting professor in the Philippines and also in. In Thailand right now. And I go over there quite a bit and give seminars and talks and do research there. But so I have that from my. All the way back from my bachelor's days 30 years ago. And then my legal degree, although I'm not a lawyer right now, I use that in My research, all my research focuses on how the legal environment influences multinational strategies in Asia. Dr. George White [00:19:20]: And so I try to bring all of that education together in bring these insights into my class, classes that I teach. I consult on the side a little bit in Asia, doing that type of stuff. And then my research is all focused on that. But at the end of the day, I think that for anybody that has sort of a unique background, you should try and leverage that, especially if you're interested in that type of work and because that's what's going to make you unique and provide possible opportunities moving forward. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:50]: Now I know you talk to a lot of graduate students and you work with students that are coming into your Doctorate of Business Administration program, but you have your own experiences as well. And I guess as you look back at your own experiences, not only personally, but also experiences in working with other graduate students and you think about other students that are thinking about graduate school, whether it be in business, law or some other field. What are some tips that you might want to offer other students considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Dr. George White [00:20:22]: I grew up in a very poor family. I remember my mom, she worked as a waitress at Pizza Hut. This is back when Pizza Hut was actually really good, when people would go and eat in the Pizza Hut and she used to wait tables and she had this big jar in her room that she would dump her change in from her tips. I'll never forget that we had to live with my grandparents, you know, and she put herself through nursing school. And then when I was in high school, she was working like two or three jobs. I never saw my mom because she was trying to provide for us. And then most of the rest of my family were entrepreneurial, that self made had their own companies. And so I learned from that that hard work is essential to success. Dr. George White [00:20:59]: And so again, going back to what I mention mentioned earlier, I've always worked very hard and because if you work hard, things will come to you. It might not be the easiest path, but there's no substitute for hard work. And hard work will provide you with opportunities at the end of the day. So I just wanted to go back to that tips again. I think you have to have a passion for what you're when you go to graduate school. And I do see this a lot. I see a lot of students coming in. I teach in our MBA program and I see a lot of students coming in our MBA program that are just in the MBA to get the mba. Dr. George White [00:21:33]: Okay, now of course that's up to them. That, that's what they want to do. But I've noticed the students that have a passion for learning and are interested in like the concepts, ideas, theories we're talking about in our classes that go beyond just getting the degree, they tend to enjoy the process and the journey that they're on a lot more than those that don't. So, I mean, I think it's important for you to find a program that you're interested in. You're going to be excited about taking the class classes in and so forth. Also, again, there's not a replacement for hard work. And this goes back to my discussing all this earlier. I've never been the smartest in any of my classes, but I'm a grinder, you know, I've had to grind things out. Dr. George White [00:22:14]: But at the end of the day, you will get to where you want to be if you put in the effort and you work hard and do your very best in your classes and in the program. So I think that's very important. Also, I think most students these days, or most students are not full time, but a lot of them are working jobs and so forth. You got to be able to manage and schedule things properly. You know, I think time management these days has become more important than ever before. And so being able to develop process you have for yourself, you know, like a schedule for yourself when you do get into the program will definitely help because it will keep you sort of segmented to where you can balance out how you get through the program week to week. So that would sort of be my advice. But I mean, the big thing is you got to really be excited about what you're planning to go into. Dr. George White [00:23:02]: And that will. That will, I think, make it to where you will get through the program a lot easier and you'll learn a lot more at the end of the day. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:09]: Well, George, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. I know there's a lot more to it, but you shared some amazing tips and thoughts on kind of the journey that you took, but also things that people can do. And I truly wish you all the best. Dr. George White [00:23:22]: Thank you, Chris. I appreciate the opportunity and thank you very much. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:26]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in continuing continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at Flintgrad office at umflint. Eduardo.
Finding Your Why: Melodee Hills' Motivating Graduate School Journey
Are you thinking about graduate school, wondering how others have navigated the challenges and triumphs of advanced education? The latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" is a must-listen for anyone considering the journey. Host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Melodee Hills, a driven lifelong learner who shares her honest, inspiring path from undergraduate degrees through an MBA and now towards a Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) at the University of Michigan-Flint. From the outset, Melodee Hills opens up about what first inspired her to continue beyond her bachelor's degree. She shares how she found a passion for learning while balancing a full-time job and recognized the importance of momentum—"school isn't getting any cheaper, and I'm not getting any younger," she notes. Her story is a powerful reminder that sometimes the best time to push ahead is when you're already in motion. The conversation dives deep into the "why" behind going to graduate school—a recurring theme in the episode. Melodee Hills encourages listeners to identify their core reason for considering graduate studies, emphasizing that a clear sense of purpose will carry you through the tough times. "Once I focused on my why, all of that other stuff just flew out the window," she shares, recounting how filtering out "noise" from naysayers and self-doubt allowed her to stay committed, even when balancing demanding work periods and academic deadlines. Another key takeaway from the episode is the importance of adaptability and self-reflection. Melodee Hills offers practical strategies for managing the ever-shifting landscape of graduate school, highlighting the need for boundaries, constant adjustment, and supportive communication with loved ones and mentors. She also touches on battling imposter syndrome—a challenge many graduate students face—and how building relationships with both peers and professors helped her find her footing in a new academic environment. This episode isn't just about hardship; it's about growth and transformation. Melodee Hills shares how her approach to problem-solving has evolved—from impulsive reactions to thoughtful research and big-picture thinking. Whether you're contemplating graduate studies or are already on the path, the wisdom and encouragement you'll hear in this episode will help you clarify your goals, anticipate challenges, and find actionable advice for success. Don't miss the full conversation—listen to the latest "Victors in Grad School" episode and get inspired to find your own path forward! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to the Victors in Grad School. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:03]: Where we have conversations with students, alumni. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:06]: And experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. You know, as always, every week, I love being able to talk to you about the journey that you're on. And it is a journey because every individual that is thinking about going to graduate school, maybe you're in graduate school, maybe you're already through partially and seen that light at the end of the tunnel. No matter where you are, you are on a journey. And at each point in that journey, there are things that you can do to be able to find success sooner. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:45]: That's why this podcast exists. This podcast exists to help you to find some tips, some strategies, some. Some hints from people that have gone forth before you, that might be in graduate school now, that may have gone to graduate school in the past and can share some of what they learned along the way with you. That's why every week, I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can share those experiences with you. And today we've got another great guest. Melody Hills is with us. And Melody is a member of the. And Melody is a DBA student at the University of Michigan, Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:20]: And she has already gone through a graduate degree once. Now she's doing it again for a different degree. And we're going to talk about that journey that she went on from getting that bachelor's degree, going to a master's, now going for a doctorate degree and talking to you about some of the things that she's learned along the way. Melody, thanks so much for being here today. Melodee Hills [00:01:40]: I am happy to be here. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:41]: It is my pleasure. Love being able to have you here and to talk about your journey and what I really want to do. First and foremost, that I want to take you back in time. So I know you did your bachelor's degree at Ashford University, and at some point, at some point during that time when you were at Ashford or maybe sometime after that, you made a decision. You made a decision that you were going to continue that education and go from getting that Bachelor of Arts in Organizational Management and continuing that to get a Master of Science in Business Administration. So talk to me about that and bring me back to that point. What was going through your head and what made you decide that graduate school was the thing to do at that point in your life? Melodee Hills [00:02:21]: So back when I did my bachelor's degree. I was really trying to finish because I had been in school for over a decade at that point, and I needed to get to that finish line to finish my bachelor's. But then while I was doing my undergrad, I said, I actually enjoy this. And at the time I was working, I was a staff accountant, and school isn't getting any cheaper and I'm not getting any younger. So I. And I was actually enjoying the process. I love learning. So while I was in that mode of going to school and working full time, I said, I'm just gonna keep going before so I don't lose this momentum. Melodee Hills [00:02:54]: So after I finished my bachelor's degree, it took me, I think it was that summer. It was just a few months later, it was less than a year later that I signed up and continued on with my master's degree just to really keep it going. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:05]: So I know that back a few years back, you made another decision. You made a decision that you are going to continue that education and can go back into the learning mode to be able to get that terminal doctorate degree in business, the doctorate of Business Administration, or the DBA degree. And not everybody wants to do that. Not everybody wants to jump back into education after they have a master's degree. I'm sure that you could have stayed with the master's degree and been plenty fine with your work and continued on. So bring me back to that point and what made you decide to shake it up and go back to graduate school to work on that doctorate degree for yourself? Melodee Hills [00:03:43]: Sure. Having a doctorate degree has always just been a goal. It's always been a personal goal. And honestly, when I finished my master's degree, I said, I am never doing this again. I am never going back to school. Academically, I'm done. But then, you know, things change. Life changes and priorities shift. Melodee Hills [00:03:58]: And I got to a point in my career where I needed to continue my own growth. I was stalled in my career, and I wanted to pivot into teaching. I wanted to pivot into getting higher into leadership, and the stars aligned, and everything just happened to line up. And I started doing my research, and I found this program, and it worked. You know, I talked to my husband about it. I talked to those that I love and are close to me, and they said, yes, this is perfect for you. You're this lifelong learner. Do it. Melodee Hills [00:04:25]: So through my soul searching and a lot of phone calls and just thinking about it, I said, yes, this is the right thing to do for me and my life. Right now to advance myself personally advance myself career wise. It just aligned. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:36]: So you did decide to attend the University of Michigan Flint for that inaugural cohort of the program when it first started. And there are many DBA programs across the nation and you're actually located on the other side of the country from where this program is located. So talk to me about that journey for yourself and that search process for yourself and what made you finally decide that the University of Michigan Flint was the right program for you? Melodee Hills [00:05:03]: Yes, I did research a bunch, a bunch of schools, all reputable, great reputations, legacy. So Michigan, of course, its reputation, its legacy. It has a strong alumni association. It's been around forever, it's not going anywhere. And full transparency. The other ones were required an in person residency either two, three, four times a year, which was fine, you know, to fly to wherever that campus may be. But because the Michigan program was 100% online, that really worked for me as much as I travel personally as for working full time and just the other things I do, the 100% online was really what made me say yes, this is, this is the, this will be the best decision for me right now and in my current lifestyle. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:47]: Now, when you transition into graduate degrees, there is definitely transitions. The way in which you're educated is different, the way in which the expectations that faculty have of you are different. And it's different at every level, in every type of degree. So talk to me about those transitions that you went through and what you had to do not only at the beginning when you were transitioning in to your different degrees at the different levels, but what did you have to do to be able to maintain the success that you found as you were transitioning in, to transition through that program and to maintain that success throughout the entire graduate degree. Melodee Hills [00:06:23]: It's constant reflection to see what works. So what works for me may not work for the next person or I may talk to one of my classmates or someone and what works for them won't work for me. And what worked for me last month may not work for me this month, you know, so it's just a constant looking and seeing where I am now. Someone just said to me recently, be where your feet are. And that to me just really resonated to just be where my feet are and okay, this is. I need to focus more. I have a paper, I have a test, I have an exam. Whatever it may be, I need to focus more this week than I did last week and just always be willing and flexible and fluid to be able to make the Adjustments needed and not be so stuck on an expected outcome because anything can happen. Melodee Hills [00:07:04]: So really just being open and fluid and being willing to adapt now, also. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:09]: When you go into a graduate degree, and I'm kind of lumping both of your degrees together, but I know that it's different at the master's and at the doctor. And as you move into a graduate degree, there are mindset shifts that you have to go through personally that help you to be able to find success. And you mentioned kind of the reflection, but I'm sure that there's some other mindset shifts that you had to go through to be able to get yourself in a place to get yourself in a place that would allow for you to be successful in the graduate program in general. So what mindset shifts did you feel like you had to go through at the master's level, at the doctorate level now that helped you succeed? Melodee Hills [00:07:46]: Mind shift. So I'll speak at the doctorate level. I, I didn't know that imposter syndrome existed until I got into this doctorate program. So that whole thing of, should I be here? Am I worthy to be here? You know, looking at certain people that have. Are in the program and just comparing myself to them, listening to other people tell me, you don't need that. Why are you doing this? And I really had to take a step back and eliminate that noise, because that's all it was. It's just noise in my head and find my own why. What's my why of what I'm doing this. Melodee Hills [00:08:21]: And once I focused on my why, all of that other stuff just flew out the window. And it was a shift of this is why I'm doing this. This is what's important to me and why I'm. I'm going to finish. And so I would just say filtering out and silencing the noise and the naysayers and all of, all of that other stuff going on to understand why I was doing this. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:42]: For me, yeah, that's important because you do have to always have in your mind's eye the end result, the goal at the end of the tunnel. I always talk about the light at the end of the tunnel because a lot of times when you're going through a graduate program, you do have to look for that light because sometimes it gets challenging. There will be challenges that you have to overcome when you're going through degrees. Talk to me about challenges for yourself. And maybe there's. Maybe there was one, maybe there was two. Are there any examples that you could share with me of challenges that you had to overcome personally. And what did you have to do to do that? Melodee Hills [00:09:15]: Working in accounting? I was a corporate accounting manager and we have month end close, quarter end close, year end close. And they don't care that I have a paper due for this course. They don't care that I have, you know, what I have going on. So trying to balance the time commitment that I needed for work and making sure I did a good job at work, as well as the time commitment that I needed for this program in particular. Because it's a lot, you know, there's a lot of reading, it's a lot of writing, it's a lot of research. So it did require a lot of time. So I would say that would be that just to understand, understand that part of it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:49]: You know, one other thing that comes to mind, and I talk to students about this all the time, is as you enter different degrees and you insert yourself into that education, sometimes that imposter syndrome creeps in and self doubt in regard to how you feel as a student and whether you feel that you're good enough or you should be there, that you can do what you're trying to do. Talk to me about imposter syndrome and how that impacted you and what you had to do to overcome that. Melodee Hills [00:10:17]: For this program in particular, since we were the inaugural program, I didn't have anyone to talk to for an example or to say, hey, what is this? Like, I jumped into this. I finished my master's degree. Gosh, it seems like a lifetime ago. So I'm jumping back into academics, I'm jumping into a doctorate program. I'm learning what my cohorts do for a living. And I'm like, my goodness, how did I even make the cut? You know, so it was like all of those types of things. And then once I got in, I just immersed myself. I became an ambassador for the program, I became a mentor for the program. Melodee Hills [00:10:49]: I started just learning my cohorts and just talking to them. I learned that I know things that they didn't, you know, so we just kind of worked with each other on each other's strengths to help each other out. So it just. In the beginning, it was so scary because I just didn't know what to expect. But then as I kind of got my footing, it took about a semester, I mean, to be honest, to really get my footing and understand what I was doing and how I was doing it and understand the professors and how everything worked. But that went away eventually. But yes, it was definitely a thing of why, how why am I here? How am I here? But I got my footing. It's okay now. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:24]: Now, you've already mentioned the fact that in going into graduate school, especially when you're working and you have family and friends and, and you're wearing lots of different hats, there is this balance that you have to find. So tell me about how you found balance in balancing school, work, family and other commitments that you might have had thus far during graduate school. Melodee Hills [00:11:44]: I just had to make sure I set the time and boundaries. Boundaries are so important with this. Like I had to set boundaries with my home. My husband and I agreed we were going to move my office space into the spare bedroom so that I could shut the door and so that I could have that time to really just focus. And that's just so important. So I would really just say communication. I have this paper due and I only have X amount of time before my next seminar to go over the proposal. So huge boundaries and communication and then execution. Melodee Hills [00:12:17]: Because it's nothing if you say, okay, this is what I'm going to do, and then you don't do it. So, you know, it's discipline. It's so much involved, especially working 100% remote and being home and you're on your own time and making sure you hit your own deadlines. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:29]: Now, you also mentioned the fact that when you went into this program, there was no one else ahead of you. So you didn't always have that support network and those people to draw from. And it is so important to build relationships, build relationships with others in the program, but also faculty and peers. So talk to me about how you built those relations, those relationships, even though there wasn't a class ahead of you and how did you build those relationships with faculty or other students and how that was impactful for you as a student. Melodee Hills [00:12:59]: So our cohort, again, we were all kind of figuring this out together. So we would talk to each other. We have a group text or WhatsApp group that we communicate through. But I. Another thing that resonated with me at my job was trust but verify. So as the communication will be going on in that group, that's great. But I just got to the point where I said, I'm going to actually talk to the professors about this. I want to make sure that I am clear on this expectation from the person who actually is giving the assignment or given the instruction. Melodee Hills [00:13:32]: So I would set up those one on one calls, I would reach out, I would email. Is this right? Is this what the expectation is? Am I doing this the right way. And I just started building that relationship and that openness and you know, certain professors I got closer to than others where I felt more comfortable to reach out to. Dr. White is amazing, Dr. Kelly is amazing, Dr. Asta is amazing. So there's this certain people that I started reaching out to more than others. Melodee Hills [00:13:55]: But once I got comfortable with that, because again, coming from corporate and then jumping into academic, these folks that have all these papers written and all these letters behind their name, you know, it was a little intimidating at first, but everyone was so open and so wanting to help and so accommodating and so responsive that it just became easy. And I just became really comfortable with not only bouncing things off my cohorts, but also just checking in with the professors. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:17]: Now you've gone through an mba, you're almost through your dba. As you think about graduate school and what you've learned along the way, how it's challenged you and pushed you in different directions, how would you say that graduate school has changed the way that you think, work or approach problems? Melodee Hills [00:14:33]: I went from being very impulsive to saying, wait a minute, let me think about that. And actually looking for things and finding information on my own and just being a more rounded thinker, broad just looking at things big picture. They say that 10,000 foot view, which I hate incorporate, but you know, I mean, but that's really the thing, you know, instead of just seeing things in this small lens, it makes me take a step back and say, wait, there's more to this. And what is that? I'm always looking stuff up now, you know, if I see something like what does this mean? Oh no, what is that? Oh, you know, so. So yeah, that's definitely been the change from being, I don't want to call it small minded. I'll just say again that small lens to big picture and trying to get the full perspective and the full picture of things. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:20]: As you think about other students that are thinking about graduate school, whether it's an mba, a DBA or something completely different. And as you think back to your own graduate school education, what are some tips that you might offer others considering graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Melodee Hills [00:15:35]: Like I said earlier, find your why. Why do you want to do this? And is this something that you can finish? Because one, it's a huge financial comm to start something and bail or quit or whatever may happen a year or a year and a half because you still have this bill, right? So one, figure out your why and make sure that it's something you can see through to the end. Talk to those that you love and trust and those that will give you honestly, both sides of it. Okay. Well, for Melody, you love to do xyz. Is this something that you can continue during ABC and just think about those things, positive and negative? It can't always be good. There's gonna be some challenges. And then again, just. Melodee Hills [00:16:14]: It's an investment. It is for time and money. Just talk to your job. If you're working full time, if you're not, if you're already a student, just understand the full picture of it. To set yourself up for success, to make sure that this is something that you can take and find your support group so that you can make it to that finish line. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:35]: Well, Melody, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for sharing your story today. I know it's not over. You still got a little bit of time left before you walk across that stage and get hooded for your doctorate degree. And I'm really excited to be able to see you as you finish this journey for yourself and see where you go from there. But I really appreciate you sharing your story today and I wish you all the best. Melodee Hills [00:16:56]: Thank you, Dr. Lewis. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:57]: The university of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that are that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad officemflint.edu.
Maximizing Grad School: Time, Money & Mindset with Abigail Weycker
Graduate school is often described as a journey—one full of unique challenges, opportunities, and moments of growth. In the latest episode of the "Victors in Grad School" podcast, host Dr. Christopher Lewis sits down with Abigail Weycker, a double master's degree student at the University of Michigan-Flint, to unpack what it takes to thrive as a grad student. Unlocking Opportunities: Dual Degrees and Joint Programs One of the main themes Abigail discusses is the value of joint degree programs, such as the university's Four-Plus-One track. Many don't realize these programs exist until someone points them out, as was Abigail's experience. By strategically double-counting certain courses, she's able to fast-track her journey, save both time and money, and ultimately earn an MBA alongside an MS in Leadership and Organizational Dynamics (MSLOD). Dr. Lewis emphasizes the importance of investigating whether your institution offers such programs, as they can offer incredible opportunities for growth and advancement. Transition and Mindset: Embracing the Graduate Challenge Transitioning from undergraduate coursework to graduate-level expectations requires more than just academic skill—it's about shifting your mindset. Abigail shares how meticulous planning and using a color-coded planner has been crucial for her success, along with meeting consistently with academic advisors. Their guidance ensures she's on track, understands course sequencing, and discovers new opportunities—like adding her second master's—she might otherwise have missed. Making the leap from "just another day of school" to treating graduate work as an investment in her future, Abigail highlights how "taking it day by day, or even minute by minute" can help manage stress and keep you moving forward. Building Relationships and Community Another powerful theme from this episode is the importance of building relationships—both with faculty and fellow students. Abigail explains that being proactive about connecting with professors and staff transformed her experience. It not only made learning easier but also enriched her network, opening doors she never expected. Advice for Future Grad Students "Dip your toe in and try," Abigail encourages future grad students. Go at your own pace, build connections, and remember: your journey is unique. The support you cultivate, both academically and personally, can make all the difference. For anyone considering graduate school—or currently navigating it—this episode is packed with practical wisdom, honest reflections, and encouragement. Listen to the full conversation to get inspired and equipped for your own grad school journey. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find. Abigail Weycker [00:00:08]: Success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love being able to talk to you about this journey that. That you're on. And I call it a journey because it truly is a journey. You are looking at graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:32]: Maybe you are. You've already applied to graduate school. Maybe you're already in graduate school. No matter where you are, there are things that you can do today, right now that will help you to be able to find success in that journey. And that's why this podcast exists. This podcast is here to help you to be able to learn from other people, other people that are currently going through the graduate school, that have gone through graduate school. Maybe they've been out of graduate school for some time, but they can still provide you with some of those building blocks, some of those things that they learned along the way that can help you as well. Today we got another great guest. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:08]: Abigail Weycker is with us. And Abigail is a student at the University of Michigan, Flint. She is actually in two different master's degrees at the same time. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:19]: And she started the first master's degree while she was an undergraduate student. So we're going to be talking to her about the journey that she has been on toward where she's going, and I'm really excited to be able to introduce her to you today. Abigail, thanks so much for being here. Abigail Weycker [00:01:33]: Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:35]: It is my pleasure. And I guess one of the things that I want to do first and foremost is I want to go back in time. I know that you were a undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, Flint, and at some point in time, you had something in your head that said to you, I want to go further. I want to go beyond the bachelor's degree, and I want to start my graduate degree while I'm an undergraduate student. So bring me back to that point and what was going through your head? Abigail Weycker [00:02:02]: Yeah, so I honestly didn't know about the joint four plus one program until I want to say, the end of my sophomore year, beginning of my junior year. And I believe it was one of our marketing assistants at the time, Audrey Banks, she had just made a flyer for it, like one of those big, gigantic flyers. You know what I'm talking about? And I was like, what is that? So I went and I talked to Tamika and Rachel, and I talked to them about what the four plus one program entails. And they told me about how you can essentially double count a few undergrad classes that are also master's level classes, and they would count towards both your undergraduate degree and your master's degree, so you can do them simultaneously. And I was like, okay, so essentially you can knock out a year worth of master's classes while also going to get your undergrad degree. So then that's why it's called four plus one. So then you only have one year of your solely, just your master's afterwards. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:01]: So full stop there, everyone. I'm going to talk a little bit about this because at the institution that you may be at, if you're an undergraduate student right now, one of the things to look at is, does your institution have a joint degree program? If they have a joint degree program in a program that you're interested in, it might be something to look into. Every university that has these type of programs set them up in different ways. And the way in which they are set up here at the University of Michigan Flint does allow for students to double count, meaning that you are taking graduate courses as an undergraduate student, and those credits transfer back down to complete bachelor's degree requirements, while at the same time working toward requirements for the master's degree as well. So that being said, you can, as Abigail just said, save some time, save some money potentially, and continue working toward your goal. Now, as I said, not every university has these, so it's not going to work with everybody. But it can't hurt to look into it further, especially if there are areas that you are interested in that have these type of programs that are available and you want to start early if you can identify what's there. Because if you can start taking them in your junior year, maybe or your senior year, you want to prepare yourself for that so that you are talking to academic advisors and preparing ahead of time. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:22]: Now, Abigail, you decided to do a joint degree program for the mba. Talk to me about that. Why the mba, and why did you decide that that was the right graduate program for you? Abigail Weycker [00:04:34]: Yeah, so I started with the MBA because it just was the logical choice for me to go from Bachelor's to Master's of Business Administration. It just sounded right. And then again, I was talking with Tamika Shepherd. She's a graduate advisor at U of M Flint, and she had mentioned that going for my mslod because my focus for my master's in the MBA is HR and Marketing. And MSLOD is more hr, solely focused. So she mentioned that doing the MSLOD would only be four more classes. So it would only take me one extra semester because I'm taking three classes at a time, which you don't have to do. That's just how I'm doing it. Abigail Weycker [00:05:15]: So I'm going full time. So she said it would only be four extra classes. So realistically that's only one extra semester for me. Technically I'm graduating twice. I'm graduating with my MBA in April of 26 and then my MSLOD in December of 26. So I was already going summer for one extra class for my MBA anyways. So I just added two MSLOD and then went forward in the fall. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:38]: And I'm going to break down these acronyms. Mslod, Master of Science in Leadership and Organizational Dynamics. Now, what Abigail was just talking about here at the University of Michigan, Flint, we call a dual degree. Many universities, dual degrees are possible. That basically just means that you are joining two different graduate degrees together. And usually if you are combining different degrees together, there's some type of an overlap between those degrees like Abigail just said. And they don't have to always be in the same academic area. So for example, you could be studying nursing and also get an MBA because you might want to do executive leadership in nursing. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:19]: So there are ways in which which you can partner different degrees together. Every institution is different and the number of credits that you can double count will be different because of that. But it's again a way for you to be able to maximize the time that you are in graduate school and be able to really focus in on those areas that you truly have an interest in as you move forward. Now, Abigail, as you were transitioning into your first graduate degree, there are definite transitions. You're going from the way in which you're educated as an undergraduate student. You were still an undergraduate student while you're taking graduate courses. And there are different expectations, there's different expectations of graduate students. Faculty are going to treat you differently, expect different things. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:06]: And you have to figure that out as you are going along. Talk to me about that transition for yourself because you have found success in this journey thus far. So as you started your graduate program, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout your graduate school journey? Abigail Weycker [00:07:26]: Yeah, it kind of sounds cliche, but the biggest thing for me is keeping a planner. I'll mark down, I'll go through the syllabus or syllabi, the first day of the new semester, and write down all of the due dates in the planner in different colors. And then that way I can mark them off when the assignment is done. And then mentally that just makes me feel a lot better and makes me not stress out about missing something as much. So with grad school, you're going to get a lot more, I wouldn't say a lot more assignments, but you're gonna get a lot more in depth assignments. So there's gonna be more parts, there's gonna be more to it, there's gonna be longer essays. So it's gonna take more time than maybe just your typical practice of maybe doing it the day before that. It's not something that you can do in grad school anymore. Abigail Weycker [00:08:10]: And that's okay. I mean it just, it's, it's all about car. That's why I use the planner, because it's all about carving out the time that I need to successful assignments on time and to the best of my ability. And then another big strength or recommendation that I have is consistently meeting with your advisor. I know everybody tells you that and everybody tells, oh, me with your advisor regularly, blah, blah, blah. And it kind of seems a pain in the butt, but it really, really, really does help because if you end up trying to advise yourself, you could screw yourself into another semester or preparing money for a class you didn't need. And you won't know that until you get evaluated by an advisor and they're like, actually, I don't know about that. And you're like, oh, okay. Abigail Weycker [00:08:56]: And you won't know your options until you talk with an advisor either. Like, I wouldn't have known about the mslod, the joint MBA MSLOD program if Tameka hadn't mentioned it to me. So it's important to make sure that you establish that connection and keep that connection and meet with them at least once a semester. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:13]: Completely agree with you. Too often I've seen students do what you just said, which was self advisement. Especially if they're in a program that might not be cohort based and they are just looking at a catalog and saying, oh, that sounds kind of interesting. What if I took this course? Or if they see, oh, I have to take this course and maybe I'll take this or maybe I'll take this next term, not realizing that a course is only offered once every other semester. So sitting down with an advisor is definitely an important piece because you can then look at that schedule and Say, well, what makes the most sense? And you might learn something, something about a joint degree or a dual degree program. You might learn about a specific class that you really have to take this term, unless you want to have a delay. Abigail Weycker [00:09:59]: That was a big one for me, was figuring out certain classes only are offered certain semesters. And you wouldn't know that unless you know the back end or you've experienced it in the past and know to look for it. It is embedded within our websites and places. But unless you have any idea about that being an option or an issue, potential issue, you don't know to look. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:21]: So talking about some of the transitions you went through as you move into graduate school, there are mindset shifts that you do have to go through as well. Talk to me about what mindset shifts did you have to make to succeed in graduate school? Abigail Weycker [00:10:35]: I think for me really is it made me realize that I'm an adult now. These are big steps to go forward, and these are the step that are going to ensure a good future for me and a good future career for me. I think it's pretty typical now that a lot of companies want you to have your master's, especially in certain topics like education likes it and business likes it. I mean, it's not guaranteed and it's not required, obviously, but some companies like it. And so realizing that and putting myself in those shoes makes me realize that getting these two masters is going to make me more attractive to certain companies and I could be more likely to get my dream job quicker than someone else who might not have those experiences. And it's taken a lot for me to shift my thinking like that because I was like, oh, it's just another day of school. Oh, it's just another day of school. Okay, now I've got my bachelor's degree. Abigail Weycker [00:11:29]: Okay, now I'm working on my master's. Okay, now the next step after that is a job. So you basically switch from a child or kid mindset to, okay, every day I go to school now. And then you're like, oh, I'm an adult. This is for something. This means something. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:46]: So as you think about the classes that you've taken, the other students that you've interacted with, you started graduate school young. There are many people in your program that probably stepped out and came back. Maybe they were working and going to school at the same time. So they're bringing different perspectives into the classroom. Talk to me about that experience for you as someone that that was young in your graduate courses and what that experience was like for you. Abigail Weycker [00:12:12]: Yeah. So I considered doing that. And it's totally okay if you do. There's no judgment, no hate, no anything. But I just know myself and I know that for the last 13 years before I started college, all I've known was school. And then the four years of my undergrad, all I've known was school. And then I started working. So I was worried that if I stopped, had a family, had kids, got a full time job, that I would be like, oh, I'm done with school and try to come back and be like, I don't, I don't know how to get back in the groove anymore. Abigail Weycker [00:12:46]: So that, that's just how I knew personally myself. And I was like, right now is the perfect time to do it. Especially with the credits double counting, I was at an advantage. So I'm like, I need to take this advantage now. I definitely do notice that I am the youngest in most of my classes, if not all of them. It's a little bit intimidating because I feel like I don't have the workforce and day to day experience that a lot of them have. But it's nice because they end up mentoring me in a way, so they end up giving me perspectives that I may have never thought about if I wasn't in this class right now. I may have them if I went and got a career right after my bachelor's and then came back, but I didn't and I went straight into master's. Abigail Weycker [00:13:27]: So I'm straight in the learning portion, not in the real world experience portion. So having a class with those that went right into the real world world experience portion helps us to mesh together the ideas of both. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:39]: The relationships that you build between as a undergraduate student, between faculty and student is a little bit different. The relationships that typically you're building in graduate school with faculty as well. So talk to me about how you built those relationships, how it might have been different between being an undergraduate student and a graduate student for yourself in the different degrees that you're working on. Abigail Weycker [00:14:03]: But. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:04]: And what did you do to be able to build those strong relationships? Abigail Weycker [00:14:08]: The same way it's important to reach out to your advisors and connect with them. It's important to reach out to your faculty and your staff and reach out to them and keep a connection up with them. Especially being at a smaller university, at being at U of M Flint, that was one of my big draws to come here is because I was looking at Ann Arbor, I was looking at Michigan State, and those are classes of upwards of maybe 100 200, 300 people, depending. So you're just going to be another head in the classroom, which that's fine if that. But for me, I. Even in high school and stuff like that, I love the connection between me and my teachers first, not even just a first name basis, but just knowing more about them and knowing their life and then finding a connection. And then we'd end up having a conversation about something I probably would have never known about them. So that's a big thing, is reaching out and finding those connections and feeling comfortable to talk to your professors. Abigail Weycker [00:14:59]: Because if I don't understand something, I don't want to feel scared to go to them. I don't want to feel scared to try and learn a concept and say, hey, I might need another Zoom meeting about this. Hey, I might need another one on one session about this. I don't, I don't understand. So it's about being not afraid to approach them and build it further than just school. Because. Because if you build it further than just school, then you're building your network eventually for your future. And then the change from undergrad to grad. Abigail Weycker [00:15:27]: Again, this is probably going to sound cliche, but I feel like in a graduate setting, you're looked at as more of an adult, you're looked at as more of an equal. And they treat you like that. Like there are professors on a graduate level that will end up, not that there's not any on the undergrad level, but they'll like, joke with you and tell them about the night before and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's great because then you build that, that connection deeper than just a classroom level. And then you feel more comfortable talking to them about certain things personally or professionally. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:57]: You also, as you've gone through undergrad into grad, you've worked on campus and you've been a part of student staff and have continued to do that in your gradu graduate degree as well. And I have told students as they go into graduate school, if they're not working full time, they should get involved on campus. They should find ways to be able to connect with people in a different way. Talk to me about your experience as a student employee on campus and what that's been like for you in balancing not only the work that you're doing in class, but also outside of class. Abigail Weycker [00:16:31]: So I will say, before I even started college, I looked into, um, Flint and reached out and figured out what organizations on campus there were that I could join. And granted, I joined a lot and then didn't Follow through with them because it got overwhelming. But there were a handful that I stuck with, such as the Society of Human Resources Management. I joined U of M Flint's women's club soccer team. I'm involved with a couple other things, but working on campus. I started in 2022 in the summer at School of Management as an office assistant. And it's part time, but then it's. It's also creating those deeper relationships with the staff and faculty that I wouldn't have. Abigail Weycker [00:17:07]: They know me on a first name basis. They know about my boyfriend, they know about my family. I know about their kids, I know about their hobbies. And you wouldn't know that if you didn't go and create those relationships. And it's nice because having an on campus job, they are almost required to. But they're nice enough to work around your school schedule. So if you're feeling overwhelmed or I need to study for this exam, hey, can I take this day off or take a couple hours to go study? And nine times out of 10, they're totally okay with it. And they totally understand because they were in your shoes one day too. Abigail Weycker [00:17:45]: And they understand that to be a student worker, you have to be a student first. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:50]: Now, as you look back at your experiences going through graduate school thus far, and you think back to starting in graduate school even before you started in graduate school. What's something you wish someone had told you before you started graduate school? Abigail Weycker [00:18:06]: So I live by this quote now. I heard it, I want to say, last year sometime from a professor, actually. He came into the office one day and I was pulling my hair out. I was so stressed and it wasn't even work. It was just like these assignments are just piling up and everything was going crazy. And he looked at me and he was like, abby, take it day by day. If it doesn't work day by day, take it hour by hour. If it doesn't work hour by hour, take it minute by minute. Abigail Weycker [00:18:32]: If you have to break it down like that, get one thing done, mark that off in your head and be like, whew, I did that. Okay, onto the next thing. If you break it down more simply like that, then it's less stressful in your head and you have more of a mindset of, I can do this. I might be overwhelmed right now, but when I get this done, it's gonna feel so good and I'm gonna be so successful, it's all worth it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:55]: I love that quote. I think that's something that anybody going through graduate school should be living by, because it can get stressful. You can feel like an imposter sometimes. There, there are definite times where you are going to be challenged in many different ways. So it is important for you to be able to look at things in small chunks, take advantage of that and get the things done you can. And just like Abby said, take it minute by minute, second by second, whatever it takes to be able to get to that finish line. Because there will be times where you're continuing to look for that light and you're keeping to walking. You're walking, you're running, you're, you know, you're doing whatever you can to be able to get to that end point, whatever that end point is. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:40]: If it's your first masters, your second master's, whatever it may be, you've got to keep going. And I keep thinking of the old adage from Finding Nemo, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming. It's the same type of mantra, but you've got to keep moving forward. So, Abby, as you think about others, other people that are thinking about going to graduate school, whether it's going for an mba, whether it's going for whatever degree, and you think back to your own education thus far and what you've learned, what are some tips that you might want to offer other individuals that you might not have shared thus far that would help students find success sooner? Abigail Weycker [00:20:20]: Really, I would say just dip your toe in and try and if it doesn't feel successful, feel good, feel like you don't continue. If it feels amazing and you're like, wow, I can do this, I think I can see myself continuing, keep doing it class by class. And like I said, hour by hour, day by day, like you can take it as slow or as fast paced as you want to. It's. Nobody's telling you your timetable. It's completely up to what is best for you and suits you to be successful both in life and in school. And I, I wish that I was less hard on myself in that way. And even now I still am. Abigail Weycker [00:20:57]: But have fun with it. I mean, obviously take it seriously, grades and all that, it's important. But enjoy your time in the school, enjoy the classes, enjoy the people you meet. Make those connections. They could be lifelong connections. I met my best friend in grad school. I might not have done that. I met professors that I know are recommendations for life. Abigail Weycker [00:21:16]: I know that I will have connection with them for from now until forever. You don't know until you try and put that foot forward. Dip that toe in. Give it a shot. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:26]: Great thoughts and I really appreciate you sharing all of this today, Abby. And I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing all of this today and for all the work that you're doing to engage with other students on campus. Abby also sits on our advisory board here at the University of Michigan Flint for our Office of Graduate Programs. So I'm always excited to be able to get her perspectives on things. So thank you for that as well. Again, getting engaged, getting involved in different ways. But Abby, I just want to say thank you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:55]: Thank you for being here today, for sharing your perspectives, and I wish you all the best. Abigail Weycker [00:21:58]: Thank you. I appreciate it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:00]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Thriving in PA School: Joslynn Walsh's Insights on Grad School Success
Graduate school is more than just the next step in your academic journey—it's a transformational experience that brings both challenges and opportunities. In this week's episode of the "Victors in Grad School" podcast, host Dr. Christopher Lewis welcomes Joslynn Walsh, a first-year student in the Physician Assistant (PA) program at the University of Michigan-Flint, to share her real-world insights on what it truly takes to thrive as a graduate student. From the outset, Joslynn Walsh recounts her unique introduction to the PA profession during her online freshman year, amid the restrictions of the Covid-19 pandemic. She highlights how proactive research, virtual events, and community panels shaped her decision to pursue a career as a Physician Assistant. Joslynn's experience resonates with anyone who's had to adapt and find clarity in uncertain times. A key theme running through Joslynn's story is the value of community. She chose UM-Flint's PA program not just for its convenient location, but for its deep connections with the Flint community. Opportunities for service learning—like volunteering at local organizations and engaging with outreach programs—set this program apart, allowing students to make a real difference while preparing for their careers. As Joslynn notes, "It's important to be present in your community, not just talk the talk, but walk the walk." Transitioning from undergraduate to graduate school isn't without its challenges. Joslynn openly discusses her own hurdles, from buying a home to adjusting to her husband's military commitments—all while starting a rigorous academic program. Her biggest takeaway? The importance of flexibility. Graduate school, especially in the medical field, demands adaptability, perseverance, and a willingness to embrace the unexpected. Impostor syndrome is another reality addressed on the podcast. For Joslynn, early experiences in simulated patient encounters and urgent care settings helped her overcome self-doubt and step confidently into her role. She emphasizes that such experiences help students get comfortable with the uncomfortable—an essential skill for any future medical provider. Finally, Joslynn offers sage advice to those considering graduate school: do your research, connect with professionals in your field, and strive for a healthy work-life balance. Above all, she reminds us that success isn't just about academic achievement—it's about caring for yourself and your community. Want to hear more about the journey, the challenges, and the victories? Listen to this episode of "Victors in Grad School" and be inspired to make your own mark in graduate school and beyond. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week, you and I are on a journey together. We have this opportunity every week to talk, to be able to help you in finding that success that you want and in this journey that you're on. And it is a journey because each person goes through a different process that you have to go through to be able to figure out for yourself what do you have to do to be able to not only apply, get accepted, but then once you transition into a graduate school, what do you have to do to be successful? And every week, I love being able to introduce you to different people with different experiences that can give you some perspective on that and what they've learned from along the way. And today we got another great guest. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:01]: Joslynn Walsh is with us today. And Joslynn is a first year student in the physician assistant program at the University of Michigan, Flint. And I am really excited to be able to talk to her about her own journey and what she's learned thus far. And she's currently in the program, so she's still learning and it's definitely not something that is done. She's going to continue to learn. Joslynn Walsh [00:01:24]: So. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:24]: So I'm really excited to introduce her to you and to have her on the show today. Joslynn, thanks so much for being here. Joslynn Walsh [00:01:31]: Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be able to chat. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:34]: Well, I'm excited to have you here as well, to be able to learn from your experiences. And I know that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Flint, and at some point in you getting that undergraduate degree, you made a choice, you made a choice that you wanted to continue your education to become a physician assistant. Take me back to that point where you decided that that was the route and what was going through your head. Joslynn Walsh [00:02:00]: Well, it kind of was an idea that started maybe freshman year. My freshman year looked a little different than most because it was online due to Covid restrictions. So I would say that my freshman year was kind of unique and was very situational, obviously like one of a kind scenario. And unfortunately it kind of closed off a lot of options as far as being able to investigate campuses. So I just think I had to do a lot of research on my own and that included shadowing and trying to do internships, but those weren't available due to Covid. So there was a online event. It was not really a job career event, but I think it was geared more towards like pre med students. And we had a few guest speakers and community members come in to speak on health careers and health professions. Joslynn Walsh [00:02:57]: So there was nursing from local facilities. I think there was a few that came from Hurley and McLaren and they came to talk on what the nursing model is. And then there was a couple of nurse practitioners who had taken the extra step and we got to hear from both of those professions. And then there was an MD who I believe specialized in nephrology. So got to hear his experience going all the way through a doctoral program. And then there was a PA and it was really cool because it was like a panel. You got to hear the difference between each of the. And when somebody is making a decision on what to be, it's not only hard to come to the decision to pick medical, but what in the medical career. Joslynn Walsh [00:03:43]: So that educational panel was really where it all started. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:47]: Now you decided to attend the University of Michigan Flint for your physician assistant program. And there's a number of different physician assistant programs, not only in the state of Michigan, but beyond that. So talk to me about that decision making process for yourself and what was going through your head as you were going through that and what made you ultimately decide to attend U of M Flint? Joslynn Walsh [00:04:09]: Probably the community. I do think the Flint community has a lot to offer. It's not just location and it's convenient access to where I live, but it's more than that. It's the farmer's market, it's the hospitals, it's the community service with like so many outreaches nearby. There's the Michigan Food bank. So close, I mean, you name it. There's so many facilities that are in need. And that's something that's always really appealed to me. Joslynn Walsh [00:04:37]: And our program specifically is fortunate enough to participate with a lot of these outreach facilities where our students are enrolled in giving back to the community. And not a lot of PA programs offer such an opportunity for service learning. Maybe they'll do like a cohort day. Well, they'll go do like a field trip and go spend XYZ hours sorting food together. And it's made two hour event. Our program does. So our students are participants in multiple programs in the community all year. And I think that's something that's important to me having been a volunteer advocate throughout high school and undergrad and continuing that community participant. Joslynn Walsh [00:05:20]: And I think it's so important as future medical providers to understand the community you're working in, understand your population, not just like their needs, but also to be present in the community yourself. So it's one thing to talk, but it's another thing to walk the walk. And I think as future medical providers, whether it's nursing or all the way up to an md, like, it's important to be present in your community. And I think our program does a fantastic job of reinforcing that and actually showing the effort that comes from that. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:50]: Well, I appreciate you sharing that. And I know that every student that goes through a process of getting accepted into a graduate program, as you enter into that graduate program, there is a process of transition, because the way that you're educated as an undergraduate student is very different than the way that you're being educated as a graduate student. So as you think about this transition that you've gone through over the last year, in stepping into the graduate program at the University of Michigan, Flint, you found success and you've been able to be successful. What did you have to do to set yourself up for success, and what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout the journey that you've been on thus far? Joslynn Walsh [00:06:32]: I definitely think it's hard to think about your successes without thinking about your trials and tribulations. So my program started January 2025. So not a quite full year yet, but almost there. And January. It was an interesting start date because I feel like most programs start in the fall and it's kind of all coordinated at the same time. But having that winter start date was already a little odd. And then I bought a house in January that was quite difficult. My timing was not my best. Joslynn Walsh [00:07:00]: I' but that's just how things go. I do think that it was a learning curve with the adjustment of responsibility. My husband serves in the Army National Guard, and he was currently on his officer training status during that time. So I didn't have my support system. So having the newfound, I guess, learning curve of graduate school life and making that adjustment, buying a house, not having that support system, he was floundering in January. It was hard to transition for me, particularly my experience, not to say that that's the experience my colleagues share. I do think it encouraged me to be flexible, which is so important as you navigate that transition time between undergraduate learning is being flexible. And I think that has been my biggest takeaway in not being able to control everything and being able to take that step back. Joslynn Walsh [00:07:53]: And which honestly saying that out loud because Is that not the perfect estimate in the medical field? Being able to be flexible when a thrown at you? It's unusual to being able to provide good patient care, being able to make decisions on the fly. I do think that it opened my eyes. I am ready for this. While it didn't feel like that maybe occurring during the experience, looking back on it, I'm very proud of myself for being able to persevere through those hard circumstances. But flexibility is just crucial in graduate school and making that transition as you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:28]: Entered into a program that is rigorous. Because I know that the physicians assistant program is definitely rigorous. It challenges you in many different ways. And I know that a lot of students that would go through that type of situation may feel a sense of imposter syndrome or self doubt in regard to am I ready for this? Am I good enough? Am I good enough to be here? Talk to me about that. And did you have any point in the last year where that has crept in and how did you handle it? Joslynn Walsh [00:08:57]: So our program, I do think it's a standard that most doctoral programs and PA programs will conduct some, some type of standardized patient simulation, like a standardized patient experience where you have actors who are presented with some type of case and you act out your role, whether that is a PA or a nurse or whatever that position might look like. So I do think that that's pretty standard across all programs. So having that opportunity to it be no risk, you're it's an actor, it is a pretend situation. Getting that opportunity to make those mistakes with no risk is honestly the big opportunity to be able to watch those errors back and see how you would do it differently. But not only that, to actually put the white coat on and to be the one knocking on the door. And it's something so simple that you don't think about whether your experience prior to this was being a medical assistant, whether it was scribing in a doctor's office. We're not the ones coming in all dressed up, knocking on the door, making those introductions, those formal introductions, I'm here to see you today. And those minute things that you don't think about going into school definitely can invoke the imposter syndrome, I think. Joslynn Walsh [00:10:12]: And we get to practice those scenarios, we get to in real time pretend to be the provider. And right now I need to stop using the word pretend because in five short months that I'm going into clinical rotations and I might be the only provider they're seeing in real time. So I practice this almost every time I go to the simulated patient experience, but also our program on something I'm very passionate about and very excited that our PA program does is Clinical Emergence. And our students are participants in Urgent Cares and around the community, the Flint community, a few other local areas. And these Urgent Cares have preceptors who allow us to come in as students and to see patients under the supervision of the urgent care provider. So as a student, having not gone to clinicals yet, I think it's once or twice a month we have the opportunity to go to Urgent Cares and to see patients on our own and then go back in the room with our preceptor. And having those experiences, experiences early on, I think gives me that edge and being able to get over that imposter syndrome a little early on before I get to clinicals. And it's the real deal. Joslynn Walsh [00:11:21]: I continuously, every time I go, I'm wearing my white coat, I'm knocking on the door, I'm introducing myself as a student and that has helped me tremendously assume my position and assume my role and kind of get over that fear. But I think with any medical provider, it's always going to be there in the back of your head. It's always going to be there saying, oh man, this is an emergency situation, I need to go get help. Nope, I am the help. They are here to see me. And you need to almost get over it. And it's blunt, it's hard, it's hard. But you are, you are their last line defense in sometimes, in some cases, sometimes. Joslynn Walsh [00:11:55]: We don't always have a huge medical team and a huge resourceful hospital. Sometimes you're the only provider in a rural medicine office and you are their doctor, for lack of a better term. So I'm very proud of my program for putting us in those positions early. Get over the awkwardness, get over the fear and be able to come out stronger. It's huge. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:16]: You know, as you think about the transition that you went into graduate school, what you've learned thus far, and you think back to before you started, what's something you wish someone had told you before you started graduate school? Joslynn Walsh [00:12:30]: It's hard to think before this started, honestly, like, that's so cheesy, but honestly, this feels like it's gone on forever and I've only ever been in PA school. Was there ever a time before PA school? I don't know, I can't even think that far. But jokes aside, I, I do, I wish I had more opportunity to spend more hands on time with PAs, with COVID and some of those shadowing and turning restrictions, I didn't get to do that as much as I wanted. So I got to do some like over the phone, like interviews and questioning people who were already practicing, which was helpful. But it's totally different being in the clinic and seeing things hand on and in real time. And I wish I would have had that opportunity. To be honest, before my program timing was against me. I do feel like when I was applying and going through the process, but I think if I were to go on, I mean now I'm a cohort mentor. Joslynn Walsh [00:13:22]: So for the upcoming cohort of class of 2028, now we got assigned our mentees and being able to assume that position and being able to maybe instill some advice going on. I do think that having a work life balance is crucial. You can't be in your books 24 7. It's not healthy, it's not maintainable. You want to be a good student, you want to be able to pursue your endeavors and have those hobbies. But to balance it. And you need to find something that works for you, whether it's making a schedule or setting aside specific time for activities or for studying. Setting yourself up for success in that capacity of work life balance, whatever it looks like for you, is huge. Joslynn Walsh [00:14:05]: And I know a lot of speakers have touched on that in the past on the podcast. And it's not wrong and it must not be wrong because people keep encouraging it and reinforcing it. And it's very true. Grad students need to have a retreat, a form of self care, and you need to attend your studies. There's no way around it. There really isn't. You have to find something that is balanced and will get you where you need to be. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:30]: I know you just gave a piece of advice, but I want to leave one more opportunity that if you were thinking about a student that was thinking about graduate school, whether whether it be physician assistant or any other field, what's one piece of advice that you'd want to give to to every student? Joslynn Walsh [00:14:49]: I think if it's regardless of it being medical, regardless of the background, I would say I think it's important to consider whether or not it's necessary. And what I mean by that is I would talk to people who are already in the field and really get the nitty gritty because some people have been extremely successful in respective fields having no master's degree. So it looks different with every profession. So I do think it would be important to have those conversations with people who are already working, who have had successful careers in the career you are desiring because there's nothing more concrete evidence than people who are currently doing the job you want. So in understanding that fields and careers change over time, so maybe requirements that weren't needed 10 years ago maybe are needed now. Maybe there are recruitment officers who are seeing a huge change in degrees and maybe populations saying everybody who we've hired in the last year had a four year degree and went on to get a master's. And maybe the fact of the matter is that's what's needed now for that job. So I think it's one thing to look things up and try to do your own research and it's a whole other thing to talk to people who are currently doing that job. Joslynn Walsh [00:16:06]: So I know that sounds all very vague, but it's, it is sometimes vague. You need to hear it from the horse's mouth sometimes and know what you're getting into. So having those conversations with recruiters, going to job fairs is super important, especially if you are in more mathematics, a STEM field that's a field that's ever changing technology and advancement. So knowing what the most up to date information is super helpful. So I think talking to people who know what they're talking about is definitely helpful for sure. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:38]: Well, Joslyn, I just want to say thank you. I know that you are still working toward the light at the end of the tunnel. It's out there. You're going to be getting into your clinicals here very, very soon. I'm really looking forward to seeing and hearing more about the journey that you're on as you're going through this experience. But I really appreciate you sharing the journey thus far with all of us today. And I truly wish you all the best. Joslynn Walsh [00:17:01]: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:03]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint Eduardo Graduate Programs to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
From History Major to Management Professor: Dr. Greg Laurence's Grad School Journey
Are you contemplating graduate school or already embarking on the journey? The latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" provides a wealth of inspiration and practical wisdom for anyone at any stage of their graduate education. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, this insightful conversation with Dr. Greg Laurence, a seasoned professor of management at the University of Michigan-Flint, explores the twists and turns of building a career through graduate studies. Dr. Greg Laurence offers a candid and relatable account of his own path—from earning a bachelor's degree in history, to teaching English in Japan, and ultimately finding his way into a management MBA and an international relations master's degree at Syracuse University. His story is marked by openness to change, reflection, and an emphasis on following your curiosity. He explains that the decision to pursue an MBA was driven by a desire to gain vocabulary and foundational knowledge in business, especially after experiencing the necessity for versatile skills while working abroad. A key theme throughout the episode is the reality of transitions. Whether moving from undergraduate studies to the workforce, or shifting from professional roles back into academia, Dr. Greg Laurence discusses how these moments can feel daunting but are ultimately rewarding. From battling imposter syndrome to adjusting study habits that change with age, he insists that success is about finding your footing, developing effective routines, and embracing the challenges inherent in graduate programs. The podcast doesn't just recount personal experiences; it's full of actionable advice for prospective and current students. Dr. Greg Laurence shares strategies for building self-belief ("You belong in this context"), leveraging diverse backgrounds for fresh perspectives, and not being afraid to voice ideas that may seem unconventional. Graduate school, he says, should challenge assumptions and push students to grapple with difficult questions in a supportive environment—without fear of costly mistakes. "Victors in Grad School" is more than just a resource; it's a community for those on the graduate education journey. If you're on the fence about diving into grad school or looking for practical strategies to thrive, this episode is sure to resonate. Listen to hear not just the 'how,' but also the 'why' behind the transitions that shape successful careers—and discover the confidence to take the next step in your own academic journey. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week, I love being on this journey with you, this journey that you're on, to be able to move toward graduate school. And you might be at the very beginning where you're just starting to think about, do I want to do this graduate degree? Or maybe you've applied, maybe you've been accepted, maybe you're getting ready to start, maybe you're in graduate school, doesn't matter. But you are on a journey, and this podcast is here to help, because every week, I love being able to help you, give you some tools for your toolbox to help you prepare to be successful in this journey that. That you're on. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:55]: That's why every week I bring you different guests with different experiences that can give you some different opportunities to be able to learn and grow from their own experiences. Today we got another great guest. Dr. Greg Lawrence is with us today, and Dr. Lawrence is a professor of management at the University of Michigan, Flint, and he's been here for a little over 15 years, and he's had his own graduate school journey. He started in Ohio and went from there to Syracuse, and we'll talk about all of that. So I'm really excited to have him here today to talk. Talk about his own journey and to share that with you. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:30]: Dr. Lawrence, thanks so much for being here. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:01:31]: Thanks for inviting me. It's a good opportunity to reach out to prospective and current students and give them a, maybe a different kind of a sense of who a professor is and how in the world some of us got into doing this. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:45]: Well, I want to take you back in time because I know, as I mentioned, you did your undergraduate degree at Ohio University, and you did that in history. And not everybody would expect that a person that got a bachelor's degree in history would go on to be a professor. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:02:00]: Not. Not everyone, including me. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:03]: So I guess I want to hear more of this story. So take me back to that point. So you did your undergraduate degree, like I said, at Ohio University, got that bachelor's degree in history, and then you had a little bit of a break where you had got some experience, did some different things, and at some point, you made a decision that you wanted to continue your education, and you chose to do an MBA So bring me back to that point. What was going through your head and what made you decide that that was the right time to make that switch and make that jump into graduating? Dr. Greg Laurence [00:02:35]: So it probably isn't the simplest answer. After undergrad, maybe, like a lot of people, I was a little bit lost about what I wanted to do. And I had gone into undergrad thinking for sure that I would go on to grad school in history. And I really got burned out as an undergrad and didn't feel like I was ready to do that at that point in life. And I had a job. I was working in a paint store, of all places. And that company, they actually approached me about joining their management training program. And going down that route is a fairly accelerated thing where you went through different rotations in different parts of the business. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:03:13]: And they were really sort of aiming for people who would end up as, like, district managers and continue on up the chain. And I knew pretty quickly that I was not all that interested in paint, and that that was not going to be a fit for me. And I remember I saw an ad in a. In a newspaper, said, do you want to work in Asia? Buy our book for 1995, and if you don't have a job within 90 days, we'll refund your money. And I thought, okay, well, try that. And that led to teaching English in Japan. I applied for a job within maybe two or three weeks of having that book, and within two months that I had a visa and was in Japan working. And I taught English there for six years. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:03:54]: I thought it would be one or two, and one or two became six. And really at the end of the fifth year is when I made this decision. So I was working at a high school, and I had this conversation with the principal about performance, as you do. You know, he was saying, oh, yeah, we're super excited. You're doing such a great job. We really love the work you're doing with the students. We want to keep you here, but we can't give you a raise. And there I was, frankly, I was at the end. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:04:17]: I had worked for a company teaching English for four years, and then I wanted to teach high school in junior high. So I left the company to go teach high school. When I did that, I took a pretty big pay cut, which was offset by free rent and some other things that the school had that ended up meaning I was making or what I had made when I left the company. But at that point, I was like, wait a minute. I don't think I can do this. As a long term career. And frankly I was not at all sure what I wanted to do. The goal was to be able to do anything in Japan that was not, not teaching English. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:04:49]: And as I thought about that, I thought working for the company where I had worked, we had been involved in the business. So we had monthly meetings about profit and loss at our branch school and how were we going to increase revenue, what were the different ways that we could increase revenue. And we had done some things but I had never really understood fundamentally what it was that made businesses tick. And it seemed to me as though if I was going to make this move from teaching into some non teaching field that having some training would be a good idea. And I mean, I think there are those who would say the heck with that, just find an entry level job, you can sell your transferable skills to somebody and you'd be able to find an entry level job. But I'm sort of more. I liked the idea of having some vocabulary and some sense of the way that people around me were going to be thinking. And that is really what led to the decision to get an mba. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:05:42]: And I was in Japan when I did all the applications. So I was geographically untethered from really I could have gone anywhere, anywhere in the US and ended up choosing Syracuse for a variety of reasons. One was the financial aid package, but another was the opportunity there to do a concurrent master's in international relations at the same time that I did the MBA and at the Maxwell School at Syracuse is a pretty well regarded school. So I was like, well that's a really cool combination that gives me the functional thinking around business, but then also satisfies some interests that I had connected back to history in an interest, interesting way. And it ended up turning out that that combination of things was really instrumental in terms of finding a job afterwards. Really fundamentally the reason the decision was based on. I was at a point in my life where I felt like I needed to make a left turn or right turn, whichever one you call it. But I wasn't going straight on from that point. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:06:42]: And that was the degree that I felt was going to open as many doors as possible and to make those ideas around. I don't know what industry I want to be in. I don't really know functional area of business I want to be in yet. But if I study them all, maybe that'll help me find a direction. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:59]: Now you found your direction because you went in, you went through that master's degree and you ended up going from there and you ended up Deciding to continue your education into a PhD? Dr. Greg Laurence [00:07:12]: Yeah, but not right away. So I did. Yeah, I did. I finished my MBA in 2003. The last semester of my MA I did at Waseda University in Tokyo while I had an internship at afs. I don't know if you're familiar with them. American Field Service to do foreign exchange programs for high school students. And I had been an exchange student in one of their programs when I was in high school. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:07:35]: So when I arrived in Tokyo, I sent a letter to their Tokyo office and said, hey, here I am. I speak Japanese pretty well, can I come and work in the office? And they said, sure, we'll give you something to do. So so I did that and until I was done with degree and then found a job for a development consulting company in Tokyo that was doing World Bank, Asian Development bank, those kind of big international financial institution consulting projects all over the world, I suppose mostly in Southeast Asia, but really in, you know, the former Soviet bloc. Lots of interesting places. And I worked in business development for them for two years and then transitioned over to. Transitioned from them over to the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan where I was the membership manager. Now that was a cool job. Actually both of those jobs were pretty cool. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:08:28]: But one thing that I discovered about myself was that I get bored pretty easily. And six months into each of those jobs I was like, oh my gosh, give me something different to do and something more meaty to chew on. And those contexts didn't allow for that. And I had had three professors during the MBA program, I think independ, but who knows, maybe they were talking to each other. They had suggested while I was in the MBA program, hey, have you ever thought about getting a PhD in management? And of course my answer was no. Who has? Conceptually I understood that the professors had PhDs in something, but what it was I didn't know. And that sort of earbud, I guess you'd call it, came back to me as I was sitting at work fairly bored. And so I got back in touch with one of those professors and I said, hey, can you tell me more about this? And he sent me a stack of peer reviewed journal articles to read and you know, said, read these and if, if you're still interested you can get back to me. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:09:30]: It was that realization that. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:09:34]: The sort of the intellectual stimulation. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:09:39]: I just hadn't. Maybe I, you know, there are probably places to work where one would get it, but I hadn't found them. And that's what really led me back to. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:09:48]: Thinking that a PhD at more graduate school was the right direction. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:52]: Now, with both the master's and the doctorate degrees, there are transitions, just like going from an undergraduate to a graduate degree. There's transitions in the way that you learn, the way that you're what you're expected to do, the all of those pieces. And you made transitions from your undergrad to work, from work, to school, from school, back to work, from work, back to school. You made a number of transitions in your journey. As you think about the transition transitions that you made in your master's, in your doctorate degree, and you think about what you had to do in those transitions, what did you have to do in those transitions, both at the front end when you were transitioning into graduate school to be able to find success, but what did you have to also do to maintain that success throughout the entire journey? Dr. Greg Laurence [00:10:41]: So I think for sure, for the first one into the MBA program, that that was challenging because I didn't have, or I didn't think I had the sort of stereotypical, prototypical business background. Being a history major and then having taught English for six years, certainly I was worried about whether I would fit with the classmates in my cohort and whatnot who were coming from what I would have considered to be more traditional business backgrounds. And so there was some length of time during which I had to, you know, it was about establishing to myself that I belonged in that context. And, you know, I studied my butt off, frankly, for the first eight weeks or so of the first semester. I mean, until that first midterm came around, and it was an accounting midterm. And I was like, I cannot afford for this to go badly, so I need to nail this thing. When the grade came back from that, I was like, oh, okay, well, this may not be. This may not be so bad. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:11:43]: And that gave me a lot of confidence to then transition into, I guess, at that point, like a role that I really fit naturally. Right. All of a sudden, I had classmates coming to me for help on accounting and finance and supply chain homework, which, if you would ask anyone I know prior to me starting my MBA program, like, do you think people will come to Greg with questions and for help on quantitative things? They would have been like, you're out of your mind. Of course not. But I just found that it was a much better fit for the way that I think than I thought it was going to be. And I transitioned into that really well. I found that my background, you know, ended up being really valued in the classroom by classmates and by faculty. And I tell this to students. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:12:28]: I just had a conversation the other day, in fact, with one of this, one of our students who's in the MBA program, who is an educator, and she was expressing some worry about fit and whether she was in the right place and what was she going to be able to do post. And I said, look, we think that those kinds of different experiences that people have are really valuable. And you're working in an organization, you're working with people, you have the same kinds of interpersonal conflicts that everybody else has. Don't let anyone tell you that working in a school is not working in the real world. It's very real. And that once you realize that, okay, somebody, person X who works for engineering firm or a person Y who works for an insurance firm, they don't necessarily have a leg up on you in your area if you're coming at it from a different angle, because that different angle is by itself of value. So I think that was the big transition from sort of that first work experience into the MBA program. The transition into the PhD program was probably more difficult. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:13:32]: First, I was what, seven years older and my brain was seven years less sponge, like it was more like pouring water onto a brick. And some of it seeps in, but not very much. Like that's how it kind of felt when I started. And the intentionality of having to study really truly full time, 55 hours a week to make a dent in my understanding of the field that I was in was a real challenge. The first semester of the PhD program was much, much rougher of a transition than had been the first semester of the mba. But I mean, I think like, just as with the mba, it was about finding footing and figuring out your routine and figuring what kinds of study approaches work for you, like your body, your brain, everything about you is different at 30 than it was at 20. And so the, the same rules no longer apply. And you have to feel, feel things out a little bit there at the beginning to sort of understand, do you need him? I see young people all the time seem to be totally fine with studying in a coffee shop and with that noise and whatnot. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:14:37]: Or I could not. There's no way I could do that when I was 35, and no way that I would have had to be. I found myself needing to be in with noise, noise canceling, headphones on and completely isolated from everything to be able to concentrate on reading or whatever I was doing. So I think it's about finding your routine and finding, finding, you know, what works for you and how to how to balance your work in your life. You can study 100 hours a week if you want to. You probably shouldn't, I think. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:07]: Yep, definitely understand that. And there is that balance that you have to find for yourself. And it's the notion, always easy, I guess, as you think about your own graduate school experience and you think about the experiences that you've had working with graduate students. Now you mentioned talking to a graduate student just recently about that I'm going to say imposter syndrome of am I really good enough to be here? Am I smart enough? Am I, you know, all of those things, those am I questions that come up as you think about students that are thinking about graduate school today, whether it be an MBA or some other pieces. What are some tips that you might offer them as they are considering graduate school that would help them find success sooner? Dr. Greg Laurence [00:15:56]: I mean, it's easy to say, but like, don't worry about that stuff. I think relatively few people make a decision to go to graduate school lightly. I mean, I think relatively few people wake up one day and say, I think I'm going to devote the next three years of my life to going to grad school. I think most people have put some thought into it and most people have investigated the content of the degree that they want to pursue. What's the curriculum going to look like, what courses are being offered, this kind of thing. And something about that has attracted them and taken them to the point where they're being intentional about filling out an application to do it. And if that's the case, then I think I would balance that self belief. I have chosen to do this because it's the right thing for me at this time in my life. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:16:45]: And that's going to, I think, balance out those questions that you have. And you need to sort of, you may be in that first class and. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:16:55]: Maybe somebody says something that you're like, that's really profound, like, how did they think of that? And that may be intimidating, but I would think to yourself and you know, think like all think about the fact that that person may be two thirds of the way through their program and they've been exposed to a bunch of content that you have not yet. And so it's natural that they've got these different lenses to view things through and they may say something that you're like, that's really cool. How did they think of that? Well, they thought about it, about it because they've been exposed to all of these other things that you're going to be exposed to going forward. And so maybe that's just an indication of how you're going to be able to think about stuff six months or a year from now and your tool kit isn't as complete as theirs are. And that's totally fine. So that I think is the biggest thing to realize is that, okay, yes, there are these moments that are going to feel intimidating, but if you think about them for a minute or two, you'll realize that it's probably just that those folks have a, have built things up and they've cobbled together ideas that you are yet to be exposed to. So take that idea that they just said and stick it in your back pocket and think about it. When you get into a marketing class, that concept that they were talking about comes up and now you can make that connection back to that first moment and be like, aha, I see what was going on there. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:18:13]: So that I think to me is the biggest thing that it's like, I don't know, I guess I can really remember being a, being like a freshman or a sophomore in college and you get a syllabus for a class and it would be like you have to write a 25 page term paper on some aspect of Babylonian history or whatever and you're like, I don't know anything about this. How am I going to ever write a 25 page paper on it? Well, of course you don't know anything about it. It's day one of the class and you're not going to know enough to even define a topic until week five. So relax, don't freak out about that stuff. The class, I mean, have confidence in the faculty. I mean, that's one piece of advice that's, that's a good one. Right? Broadly, we have thought faculty fairly carefully about does this class need a prerequisite in order for you to be successful? If not, you'll be okay even if other people are in the class and they've already had a bunch of other courses. Like we're, we've designed the course so that you can be successful if you don't have a prerequisite. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:19:11]: Because if you couldn't, we would put a prerequisite on it. So I think that's, that's one piece of advice, right? Is like, sure, be nervous. Sometimes stress is good eustress, they call it in the business. But you know, also realize that these things are sort of designed so that you're not being set up for failure. And. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:19:33]: If you do what's on the page as far as the syllabus is concerned and you read what you're supposed to read and you know you'll be okay. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:39]: Well, Greg, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today, for sharing everything that you have learned thus far. And I'm sure you're still learning as you work with more students, as you're teaching more classes. But I truly appreciate your time today and for you sharing all of this with us, and I wish you all the best. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:19:59]: If I can give one more piece of advice to a student, it is to not be afraid to express thoughts and ideas that you have about class content that may feel like they're coming out of left field. I have designed my courses to be the courses themselves are out of left field for a lot of people. They come in and they look at my syllabi and they go, what is going on in terms of the structure of the course and how the grading systems are set up and things like that. But they're designed to free the students to think about problem from different angles. And you shouldn't be afraid to do that. Graduate school is about exposing yourself to different ways of thinking and to challenge your assumptions, and it shouldn't be. And this is, I'm stealing from Michael Wheeler, who's a Harvard faculty member who wrote a paper about this that I read once. It should not be painless. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:20:50]: You should have your assumptions challenged and you should struggle with things. And if you're not struggling with things, like you're not probably, I think you're probably not thinking about them hard enough. You're just sort of scratching the surface of the content that's in front of you. And I would encourage you to go deeper and to grapple with the tough questions because it's a place where you can do that without costing your company $5 million. For example, the decisions that you make about how to think about a problem in a business class, I mean, if it's not right, that's okay, right? Learn from that mistake. You didn't just press the wr. The wrong button on a keyboard and cost, you know, make a trade you weren't supposed to that lost your company 3 million bucks or whatever. So it's. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:21:35]: I, I find the whole. I really liked being in grabbing and I like being in graduate school enough that I did it twice and spent a long time, a long time there. So hopefully students will, will hear this. Prospective students may hear this, think, you know what? I'm going to give it a shot, and I think you'll come out of the other side of it. With a real sense of accomplishment. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:55]: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing that today, for sharing your own perspectives, and I truly wish you all the best. Dr. Greg Laurence [00:22:03]: Thanks very much. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:04]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit UM Flint. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:22:25]: To find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
From Veterinary Dreams to PT School: Olivia Warrington's Academic Pivot
Are you considering graduate school or currently navigating your own academic path? The latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" shines a light on what it really takes to thrive—both academically and personally—through the honest, inspiring journey of Olivia Warrington, a second-year physical therapy student at the University of Michigan, Flint. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, the episode opens by setting the stage for listeners at any point in their graduate school journey. Whether you're just thinking about applying, already accepted, or deep into your studies, this podcast is designed to offer practical tips and relatable stories from students and experts who have been there before. Olivia Warrington shares her winding road from an initial pursuit of veterinary medicine to discovering her passion for physical therapy—thanks in part to a serendipitous conversation with a peer. Her experience is a powerful reminder that sometimes, the most impactful decisions can stem from the simplest moments. A major theme discussed in the episode is the need for self-discovery and adaptability. Olivia Warrington reflects on her transition from undergraduate studies, where she admits to "skating by," to finding success in graduate school through refined study habits and intentional learning. She candidly discusses her process of trial and error, emphasizing that what works for others may not work for you—and that's okay. Her advice? Develop effective study strategies early and continually refine them as you go. The importance of balance comes up repeatedly. Olivia Warrington talks about the challenge of not letting academic demands eclipse family and personal life, recounting how she learned to say yes to life outside of school without sacrificing her grades. Her journey underscores that holistic success in graduate school means making intentional time for both education and cherished relationships. Another highlight is Olivia Warrington's emphasis on building a supportive community. She gives credit to her peer group for providing not only academic support but also critical emotional encouragement. Find people who align with your values and study approach, she suggests, as these relationships can carry you through the toughest moments. To anyone considering graduate school, she offers words of encouragement: have confidence in yourself, explore all opportunities, and don't be afraid to ask questions. Your educational path may have unexpected twists, but with the right mindset and support, success is within reach. Tune in to this episode for honest insights, motivation, and the assurance that you're not alone on your journey to becoming a victor in grad school. Listen now! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week we are on a journey together. I call it a journey because it truly is. As you are thinking about graduate school, you may be at the very beginning where you're just starting to think about this. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:31]: You may have already applied, maybe you got accepted, maybe you've started graduate school. No matter where you are on this continuum, you're on a journey. You're on a journey toward meeting the goals that you've set for yourself. And this podcast is here to be able to help you in that journey. I love being able to have an opportunity every week to sit down with you, to talk to you, to provide you some hints, some tips, some things that you can use to be able to find success in your own journey sooner. That's why every week I bring you different people, different people with different experiences that can help you to be able to think about things in different ways and allow for you to learn from what they've learned in their own educational journey. This week we got another great guest. Olivia Warrington is with us today. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:15]: And Olivia is a second year physical therapy student at the University of Michigan, Flint. And she's had her own educational journey that led her to being here at the University of Michigan, Flint. And I'm excited to be able to talk to her, to learn from her, and to share that with you. Olivia, thanks so much for being here today. Olivia Warrington [00:01:36]: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:39]: Well, I'm really excited to have you here today and I want to take you back in time because I know that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Detroit Mercy, and. And at some point in that educational journey, whether it was right there at UD Mercy or sometime before that, or sometime in between, you made a decision. You made a decision that you wanted to continue your education. You wanted to become a physical therapist. Bring me back to that point and what was going through your head as you were making that choice for yourself of wanting to continue that education. Olivia Warrington [00:02:13]: I always knew from a young age that I was going to do more school after high school and I was probably gonna have to do more school after. I was probably gonna do some kind of GR program, my childhood dream. And up until my junior year, I was heavily committed to veterinary medicine. And I started that journey. And I got there and I went through. I was still a biology major at that time, so going into my third year, I took five years to do undergrad. And I. I was like, ah, this just doesn't feel right. Olivia Warrington [00:02:45]: This doesn't feel right. I was talking to some kid on the soccer team, and he was like, I'm gonna do physical therapy. I'm like, what is that? What does that entail? So I into it. And I was like, you know what? This sounds like something I could do. This sounds like, you know, I'll just. I'll give it a shot. I'll go shadow. And. Olivia Warrington [00:03:02]: And I loved it. And it's not a super glamorous story by any means. It's just some kid telling me what he was doing. And I. I was like, yeah, I mean, if you're doing it, maybe I'll like it too. And then I stuck with it. And I love it. And I'm so glad that that person told me that he was going to do physical therapy. Olivia Warrington [00:03:17]: That was about it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:18]: So every person goes through a journey after they make that decision to try to figure out, where do I want to go. You got into that fifth year, and you're starting to think about, okay, where am I going to go? What do I need to do? What kind of things do I need to think about? You ultimately decided to attend the University of Michigan Flint. Talk to me about that process for yourself and what ultimately made you decide that the University of Michigan Flint was the right school for you. Olivia Warrington [00:03:46]: Yeah, overall, I was really looking for something to be close to home. Something I could commute and still live at home, save a bit of money, but if I had to stretch, I would. But. So I applied to all the schools in. In Michigan. I. I heard that physical therapy was really competitive. And so I was just like, you know what? I'm just gonna. Olivia Warrington [00:04:03]: I'm gonna apply to everything, and hopefully I land somewhere. And fortunately enough, I actually got into quite a few schools, and I applied to nine, and I got into eight out of the nine. And I was. I was like, whoa. I did not expect that to happen. And I. Michigan and Oakland, Wayne State are kind of like the three commutable schools around me. And U of M Flint does a ton of community outreach, and I love that they can make this huge impact on mostly the neurological patients in. Olivia Warrington [00:04:37]: In Flint with their pro bono clinic and all the exercise classes. I'm sure that Oakland and Wayne State also do those things as well. But I really liked going northbound on 75 instead of southbound. So it seemed like a great fit going and talking to the professors and whatnot. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:04:52]: Every student that chooses to go to graduate school has to go through a transition. You have to go through transition relearning how to learn in many different ways. Because you're educated in one way as an undergraduate student, you go to graduate school and there's different expectations from your faculty members. So talk to me about that transition for yourself. As you transitioned in and through your first year into your second year of physical therapy school, you found success. So what did you have to do to be able to set yourself up for success, and what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout your life, your graduate school journey thus far? Olivia Warrington [00:05:30]: So, a little background on my undergrad. I. I wasn't a super great student. I. I really struggled. I had a really hard time finding what worked for me. And I just kind of like skated by and eventually it all clicked and it came together and it was good, but I never had any, like, true structure to my studying or to the people I surrounded myself with. And I, I just kind of, I just did it and then I ended up here. Olivia Warrington [00:05:54]: And then in grad school, I had to really figure out. It kind of, it happened. So outcomes and you just have to pick it up and you have to study and you have to do it. So I had to find a great way to study and what personally worked for me because I was looking at other people and I was like, oh, that works for you and you're doing really good. That should work for me too. And that wasn't always the case. So I had to really quickly trial and error, all these different study habits. I found that in my first semester, but I really worked hard in developing those study habits. Olivia Warrington [00:06:24]: And then it more fell into place second semester. And then by the third semester, I was like, this is it. This is how I'm going to study. This is what works for me. And then I was able to refine it from there, and it just works now. And now I'm doing good. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:06:36]: So talk to me about what did you have to do to be able to find that vibe for yourself? We'll say the mojo that you had to figure out for yourself to be able to get yourself on that right path. Were there specific things that you had to do was a trial and error? Was it something else that really helped you get to that point where you figured out, this is the right place for me? Olivia Warrington [00:06:57]: Yeah, yeah. So what I personally had to do was I. I Didn't know what I could do minimally to maximize my time. So essentially just overstudied. I overstudied for everything and I put a ton of time. I'm, I'm very surprised that I wasn't burnt out after my first semester, but I, after that I was like, something's gotta change before I do hit that burnout. So I picked out the good things and then I held onto those and then I slowly trialed out little things, just keeping the core, that core one good thing, and then added some, some others as I went. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:34]: I share, I appreciate you sharing that. Now you're in your second year and there are definitely things that you had to do as you went along that helped you to become the professional that you are becoming. And I'm sure that there may have been points along the way where that imposter syndrome snuck in. Talk to me about that and what did you have to do to handle that? Olivia Warrington [00:07:57]: So with the imposter syndrome, I don't think it's hit me so much yet. I am just starting my first big clinical rotation, so I'm just starting to feel like I'm like, do I even really know things? Which I'm starting to come around to find out that I do. I'm only on day two, so we'll. I'm still trying to prove to myself, but handling it, I'm still trying to figure out what is working best for me. But so far it's just been making sure I feel over prepared for my clinical rotations. Like when the day, night before or even two weeks prior, I was, I was really like freshening up on my skills and I guess throughout the program when I have had those inklings of imposter syndrome, I have, I've just really dug into my work and really made sure that I feel overprepared for specific situations. But in the long run, I'm still, I'm still really trying to figure that part out. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:48]: So as you've been going through graduate school, there's a lot of times that, where you have to balance things and all of us wear different hats, we have different people vying for our attention, we have different things vying for our attention. And physical therapy as a educational area is a demanding field. It takes a lot of your time and requires a lot of you. So talk to me about balance and how did you find balance within your education in the sense of your schooling, but also balance in work and family and personal responsibilities that you had to maintain throughout graduate school? Olivia Warrington [00:09:26]: This is a great Point and something that I really had a hard time navigating at the beginning. My first semester, it was just. I thought that I only could do school. I only said yes to school. And then it became very easy for me to just say yes to school and say no to everything else. So I. School just became my default. And I started missing out on things. Olivia Warrington [00:09:46]: I started missing out on family events and I have little brothers, and so I. I started missing out on some of their big things. And I really hit a point where I was like, I really need to start prioritizing my time a little differently. I was doing really good my first semester and I was like, what can I. What can I cut to make it a little bit more of a work life balance type deal? So I just committed to saying yes to one thing. One thing. A week was my start. And so I started saying yes. Olivia Warrington [00:10:20]: And I would go, I'd still do work that day or whatever in the morning, but. And then I. I saw the end result at the end of that second semester and I was like, oh, I did about the same. I did the same. So I'm still doing really well. I'm saying yes to family things. And then the next semester, I started saying yes to a couple more things. Just not extending myself over my limit, but still allowing myself to be immersed in my family and be a part of my little brother's life. Olivia Warrington [00:10:48]: And my friends missed me so much and, and still did about the same. And so just a little bit of fluctuation, but I was still getting more family enrichment type deal. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:58]: So as you're thinking about the experience that you've had thus far in your experience in graduate school. And I know that the experience going through graduate school, especially within physical therapy, is a collaborative one in regard to the cohort that you are a part of and that you're with as you go through that experience and that it's important to have those systems of support for yourself throughout the graduate school experience. Talk to me about the relationships that you've been able to build with faculty or peers or students and how that has been able to help you in the journey that you've been on thus far. Olivia Warrington [00:11:39]: Yeah, this one's also really important, in my opinion. At the beginning of grad school, we're all just individuals trying to find our way and trying to find our group. And then you start to slowly see everyone coagulate and you've got these groups. And I just. A couple of girls sought me out and they asked if I wanted to be a part of Their group chat and it just happened to work out so beautifully. The universe really aligned for me that day when I was asked to be. Kind of seemed like they're asking me to be their friend a little bit. And it was, it was very sweet. Olivia Warrington [00:12:12]: And it just so happened that we had very similar study habits and just very a lot of things in common. How we view school, our excitement for learning and so finding that group that really fits what you, how you view school, how you view studying, how you view your career is very important. And I noticed that each of our little groups in the cohort are so vastly different in how we study and what we have in common and all these things. All very great individuals. But these groups, they fit together so beautifully and everyone succeeds in their own way. But with each other and having my friend group, I give them a ton of credit. I don't think I really would have made it this far without them and without their support. But we lean on each other so heavily and making sure that if it isn't really a great fit, we can always find another friend or at least someone to rely heavily on study wise. Olivia Warrington [00:13:11]: But I really rely heavily on them. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:13]: You know, another thing that comes to mind is that as you think back to your education, you think back to the transition into to physical therapy school and you think back to who you were before that. What's something you wish someone had told you before you started graduate school? Olivia Warrington [00:13:32]: I wish someone told me to have confidence. I know that's a simple one. I feel like a lot of people say that. But the confidence factor in my ability and my ability to study and my ability to potentially treat patients one day and to make a great impact in the community. I wish that was hammered, hammered in sooner. Sooner. It would have saved me some trouble in this last year. But yeah, I think that one's simple and sweet confidence. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:14:00]: And finally, as you think back to your own experience thus far and I know it's still going, but you think about other students that are thinking about graduate school, whether it be going to become a physical therapist or something completely different. What advice would you give to that individual that was thinking about graduate school that would help them find success sooner. Olivia Warrington [00:14:22]: Smaller level study wise. I would find your way of studying in undergrad find that out sooner while you have room for more mistake. It will definitely save a lot of, a lot of hassle your first couple semesters if you have that lockdown sooner rather than later. But also to go and try everything. Go and shadow. Go, go ask as many questions as you can. I wish I. I wish that I. Olivia Warrington [00:14:49]: I did that more. And I go to every in person interview and for. If you're applying and you get an interview to a school, go and look at the campus, talk to the students, go and do a tour on your own. I did that. And I think that was the best thing I could have done is I went and I just. I did it and I went in person and I experienced this whole beautiful process of applying to grad school. It's so hard, but if you can almost romanticize it a little bit and make it this, like, awesome process, it just makes it so much less stressful and so much more of an accomplishment when you get there. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:23]: Well, Olivia, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. Thank you for sharing what you've learned thus far. I know it's not done. I know you still have time in front of you and probably your answers will be shaped over the next year and change as you are going through these intense clinical experiences. You're being put to the test for seeing how all that knowledge coalesces into the practice that you're doing with the patients that you're working with. But I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing all of this, and I truly wish you all the best. Olivia Warrington [00:15:57]: Thank you so much and I hope this information helps someone on their journey. All right. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:03]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, Visit. Visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
From Netflix to Doctorate: Seana Goodson's Journey Through Grad School
Are you contemplating graduate school, or already navigating its rigorous demands? The latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" serves up a dose of inspiration, practical advice, and hard-earned wisdom from Seana Goodson, a proud University of Michigan Flint online DBA candidate and Netflix professional. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, this conversation shines a light on what true resilience looks like—along with tips that can help anyone thrive on their own graduate journey. Seana's story stands as a testament to the power of determination, unconventional paths, and lifelong learning. From navigating early obstacles as a young mother to returning to school and excelling at each step—from undergraduate studies in Sociology and English, to earning her MBA, and now thriving in a rigorous doctoral program—she embodies the spirit of perseverance and ambition. A key takeaway? Graduate school is no walk in the park. As Seana Goodson bluntly puts it, "you have to be ready—100% ready." She stresses the importance of preparing yourself mentally, communicating clearly with family and friends, and carving out dedicated time for study, regardless of personal or professional obligations. Managing distractions by setting boundaries, using tools like calendar blocks, and being transparent with those who support you are essential strategies for success. A recurring theme is the importance of building a support system—your "tribe." Seana Goodson credits her cohort and mentor network for providing the encouragement, understanding, and motivation that help her stay on track. Whether it's a group chat with peers or finding mentors ahead of you in the process, leaning on this community makes the journey more manageable and far less lonely. On the topic of burnout, Seana is candid: it happens, but prioritizing self-care makes recovery possible. Meditation, carving out quiet moments, and giving herself grace are all tools she uses to avoid feeling overwhelmed. This episode is packed with encouragement and actionable tips, from the value of seeking out campus resources to the importance of giving yourself grace—especially when imposter syndrome creeps in. Ready to hear more about Seana's journey and pick up inspiration for your own graduate school road ahead? Tune into this week's episode of "Victors in Grad School" and discover what it truly takes to be a victor in your educational journey. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find. Seana Goodson [00:00:08]: Success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. As always, every week, I love being able to be on this journey with you because it is a journey. Every one of you that are thinking about graduate school, no matter where you are in this process, are on a journey. Whether you're just at the very beginning starting to think about graduate school, maybe you've applied, maybe you got accepted, or maybe you're in a program. Doesn't matter. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:44]: Every one of you is on this continuum, this journey that you're going to be going through to be able to move toward the goals that you've set for yourself. This podcast is here to be able to help you in that journey. Every week. I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can talk to you about the journeys that they have gone through or are in right now so that you can learn from them, maybe learn some things about what they did that maybe they wish they didn't do or things that they did that really worked. But in the end, it's all about helping you be successful. So I'm really excited that you're here, and I'm excited to introduce you to this week's guest, because this week's guest is Shauna Goodson, and Shauna has been in the entertainment business for many, many years. She works for Netflix and has her own graduate school journey, and she did her undergraduate work at Georgia State University, studying sociology in English. And we're going to learn a little bit more about the journey that she's been on to continue that education. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:52]: So I'm really excited to have her here today and to have her a part of this journey. Shauna, thanks so much for being here today. Seana Goodson [00:02:00]: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:02]: Well, I am really excited to have you here today to have you share some of this journey. As I said, I know that you did your undergraduate work at Georgia State University, and at some point in that journey, you made a decision because you were studying sociology and English. But at some point in that journey, you made a decision to continue your education. Bring me back to that point where you said to yourself, I need to continue this and go to graduate school. What was going through your head and why did you make that choice? Seana Goodson [00:02:34]: Well, for me, it's a lot of my so my journey has been anything but conventional. So I'll tell you about it. So even undergrad, so undergrad year, I've always been a rebel. So I'll let you guys know that right now. I've always been a rebel, so I'm always going against the grain. That's what we Aquarian people do. So when I was in undergrad, my sophomore year in undergrad, I got pregnant with my oldest son. So people said, oh, she's not going to. Seana Goodson [00:03:01]: She's on the dropout. She's not going to go back to school. She's not going to do that. Yes, I did drop out. So that's why my journey is not conventional. So once I decided to go back, then I said, okay, all of these naysayers, you know, said, I couldn't. Let me show you. I can. Seana Goodson [00:03:16]: So I did. So after I graduated from my undergrad with sociology in English, then I decided, okay, I'm going to go to grad school. I'm going to get my mba. So I did. I started on that journey and went to Nova Southeastern University, where I received my mba. And I've always had a thirst for knowledge, and I knew I wanted to continue. I knew I wanted to do something, even though my undergrad was soc. I knew I wanted to do something in the legal world. Seana Goodson [00:03:43]: But I also have entertainment intertwined in that because I am a big entertainment fan. So I knew I wanted to start that journey somehow. I didn't know how, but I knew I wanted to. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:55]: So talk to me a little bit about that initial decision. So you decided to go to Nova southeastern for an MBA. So why an MBA? But also, there's many MBAs that are out there. You were in Georgia. You were. You could have stayed in Georgia. You could have gone anywhere around the country, and almost every university has an mba. So talk to me about what was it about, specifically Nova Southeastern that ultimately made you decide that that was the right program for you? Seana Goodson [00:04:24]: So the reason why I chose Nova 1 is because it was a highly reputable school. I mean, fantastic school. And one, I already had a child. So I knew I wanted to stay in the south because I had my kid. And. And also NOVA targeted people who are working adults. That. That's what stood out to me. Seana Goodson [00:04:44]: I wanted a program where I could still have my job and take care of my son, but I can also get my mba and I could do it in a quick time. Like, I didn't have to take breaks. It wasn't that kind of schedule. So I just went all the way through and finished in 14 months. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:00]: Now, I know that since that MBA you went off, you worked. You've been working for many years. But at some point in this continuum of being in the entertainment industry for many years, at some point you made the decision, I'm not done and I want to continue. And you ultimately decided to apply to a doctorate of Business administration program here at the University of Michigan Flint. And you got in here. So talk to me about, just like we talked about with the mba, why a dba and why the University of Michigan Flint? Seana Goodson [00:05:33]: Well, let's talk about the University of Michigan Flint. Let's talk about the University of Michigan, the best school on the planet planet. And I am a huge Michigan supporter. My youngest son graduated from Umich Ann Arbor, and he's now a student at Umich Flint, working on his mba. So we're just a Michigan family by far. And Michigan. What made Michigan stand out for me was the reputation where I know I can take this degree. This degree is not going to be just a dba. Seana Goodson [00:06:03]: It's going to be a DBA from Umich Flint, period. So that's what was important. The reason why I chose to continue on my journey is one, I'm home by myself now. I don't have any kids in my house, but two, in my career, like I said, like, I'm thirsty for knowledge. Like, I want to learn more, I want to do more. And with AI being a big thing now in every industry, I said, okay, I need to go back to school. I need to get my dba. I wanted to stay in business. Seana Goodson [00:06:30]: Since I already had an mba, it just made more sense for me to get a dba. And I wanted to become a subject matter expert in artificial intelligence and how it's affecting the entertainment industry. So my dissertation in a Nutshell is Gone is about how artificial intelligence is transforming the way studios hire voiceover talent. Because that's one of my big negotiations. I draft and negotiate deals every day for animation. And one of the big sticking points is you're going to steal my talent's voice. Are you going to make a show or they're going to be out of work? So I want to show people it's not necessarily that. It's not going to put people out of work. Seana Goodson [00:07:09]: It's just going to enhance things for everyone. But with Umich on my back, I mean, I can take this everywhere. I can take this on the road, I can take this for Netflix. I could take this anywhere. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:21]: With every school that you go to and every program that you transitioned into. There are transitions. Going from being an undergraduate student to being a student in the mba, going from being in the entertainment industry for many years and then transitioning back into the classroom again. Transitions. And you found success in graduate school. Talk to me about at the mba, at the DBA level. What did you have to do to set yourself up for success and what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout the entire graduate school journey that you've gone through thus far. Seana Goodson [00:07:57]: To set yourself up for success? One is, you know, you have to be ready. Graduate school is no walk in the park. It's a lot of work. So in order for me to set myself up for success before I even started in any of these graduate level programs, I knew I had to be ready, 100% ready. No distractions. I mean, we all have distractions, but you just have to know how to deal with your distractions and you just have to be ready and then you have to give yourself grace. That's the one thing. And, but like I said, you have to be prepared. Seana Goodson [00:08:29]: Like, I don't even know how to tell you to be prepared to be in this journey, but just know you need to be ready. Especially when you come to a school like UMich. Be ready. Because all the studies in any graduate level program is going to be rigorous. You know what I mean? It's not going to be simple. No one is going to hold your hand. But just being prepared, that's my only thing I can say is just being prepared and not having any, not letting distractions get in your way because you will have distractions. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:57]: When you talk about distractions, what have you had to do to be able to minimize those distractions for yourself that might help others as their step stepping into graduate school. Seana Goodson [00:09:08]: For me, like, my schedule is busy. Like, I am slammed every single day, but I always carve out time that I know that I need to be focused on school and on my studies. And then as far as, like with my family, with my family, I always tell them, listen, I'm studying just yesterday, prime example. My sister wants to get on the phone and gossip about the housewives. I don't have time for that. It's like, listen, I'm working on my doctor right now. I. I have no time to talk. Seana Goodson [00:09:36]: So I have to let my family know I can't do some of the things that I used to do. Not right now. I will. One, once I graduate and once I become Dr. Shawna, then I can do stuff. And who knows, I might not be able to then because I'll be doing. I'll be on to the next thing. But it's just being real open and transparent with, if you have a job, being transparent with your job. Seana Goodson [00:09:58]: Listen, from this hour to this hour, I'm on dnd. Do not disturb me. And I do have a focus time on my calendar because for me, Sometimes I work 18, 20 hours a day. That's no joke. That's real. But people know if my calendar is blocked and if you're not pinging me saying, hey, I see your calendar is blocked for the next three hours. Is this real? Yes, it's real. I can't talk right now. Seana Goodson [00:10:21]: So I feel like that's one of the things that helped me along the way. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:25]: I love that you said that because I have said that numerous times to many audiences along the way. To be able to say, hey, you do have to have those conversations up front. You need to make sure that as you are starting graduate program that you talk to the people around you. You need them as a support, as a support network. But at the same time, you need to be honest with them about what the reality is and what that experience is that you think the experience is going to be like. But then you have to go back and update them on what the reality actually is. Because you might say up front, I can talk to you every other day. But then as you get into it, you might be like, if I'm lucky, I'm going to be able to do this once a week. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:06]: And because a lot of times your family or your friends think of you as, hey, I can just call shauna. Because we're BFFs and, and we always talk about the housewives. But the reality is they may. They've never been in a DBA program before. They don't know what it's like. And if you've said to them, I can talk to you every other day, they're going to expect you're going to talk to me every other day. And if you don't update that reality with them, they're going to feel slighted in many ways. So always continue the conversation, keep the communication open, and make sure that they are aware of what you're going through and what you need. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:11:42]: Because if they're going to be a support, there's still going to be a support. They just need to know how to support you. Seana Goodson [00:11:46]: I totally agree with that because I have three adult sons and two granddaughters, and their reality now is do I need to get on mom's calendar? Because they can't talk to me all the time. And if I'm in residency, because we have residency once or twice a month, I am totally blocked out. Like I'm up at 5 o' clock because my first residency is at 6am My time, which is 9 on the east Coast. I can't talk to you. Just like you hear my. The pings going off right now. It's only 7:25 here and people are already pinging me from my office. But, you know, it never ends. Seana Goodson [00:12:24]: But I have to. You do. You have to be open with your family. You have to be open with your friends. Because I'm a socialite. That's real here. So brunch every Saturday or Sunday. I don't do those anymore. Seana Goodson [00:12:38]: I can't do them right now. Only time I was able to do one is when we had kind of a break. We had like a. Maybe before I was transitioning to. From one semester to the next. I think I had like a couple of days break. I did go and brunch then, but the brunch I went on was with another UMich student who is also working on her DBA who's graduating next year. And we talked about school, of course. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:13:04]: And that's another great point, is that as you're going through that graduate program, find those supports that you can have that are part of the program, Whether they're in your year, they're ahead of you, they're behind you. Because those individuals can be individuals that can help you as well in many different ways. Because sometimes you just need to vent to people that really get it, and that is definitely an important piece. Seana Goodson [00:13:27]: And find your tribe. So my cohort, we have a group chat that we get on them or we vent and then we talk about stuff and then we talk about. Do you understand this assignment? What. What should we be doing here? We do it all day. Like, we. And we all are working professionals. A lot of us are executives. So it's. Seana Goodson [00:13:46]: We just carve out the time to reach out to each other and that's why we have the group chat. So some people may not be able to answer now, but they might answer at three in the morning, which is six for them and three for me. So you find your tribe and then like some people in your cohort, you might have a closer relationship. Like I have the one person in my. A couple of people in my tribe is Melissa, Lance and Aaron. Like, I talk to those people all the time. We'll get on the phone, we'll talk and. And we might go through assignments together. Seana Goodson [00:14:16]: But those people become your. Your friends, your tribe. And so some of the, your, Your friends, your real circle, if they understand, they have to understand, like, okay, this isn't about us anymore. Now you have this whole new tribe of all these doctorate students, so you don't have time for us. But you. When you make them understand. Well, I have to talk to people who can. We. Seana Goodson [00:14:39]: We can bounce ideas off. So my mentor from my first. Is from the 1st DBA Corps. And I talked to her. She's awesome because she's already been through this journey. She's already hit certain walls that I have to hit. So. And then now I'm a mentor at. Seana Goodson [00:14:56]: In Michigan Flint for people under me, like master's students. So that's a blessing in itself because it makes me feel good to be able to help someone along the way. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:04]: Now you've already been talking about how busy you are. You've got a ton of things happening. Netflix, you have a ton of things happening with your family and friends and a lot of people pulling from your time. For many students, that could lead to burnout. So talk to me about how did you. Do you avoid burnout? Or how do you recover from it when you have felt overwhelmed thus far? Seana Goodson [00:15:28]: The way to avoid burnout. And I am just a firm believer in this. I meditate. I used to believe in that because I said, oh, that's just bogus. That's an L. A thing like people. Everyone out here meditates. But it's real. Seana Goodson [00:15:42]: Sometimes I'll just sit in silence and I meditate. And I have these little things right here that I keep. These are. These are crystals that I keep. I just believe in energy and stuff. But. But I do. I meditate and I take time for myself. Seana Goodson [00:15:56]: And sometimes I'll take. Even if it's only five minutes, you take the time for yourself because you will burn out if you keep on the route that you go. Like for some. Like for instance, someone like me who works a lot. I work a lot. So I'm juggling all of these 50 million things, but then I'm juggling 50 million things from school. And you will hit that wall. And then so you have to. Seana Goodson [00:16:20]: One step back. You have to give yourself grace. You have to talk to yourself. You have to encourage yourself. Every day I get up, I look in the mirror. I always say, girl, you are everything. You have to do that for yourself. You have to talk to yourself. Seana Goodson [00:16:34]: But my one thing, yeah, is definitely is meditation. Meditation and green tea. Decaffeinated green Tea. That's my. That helps me from burning out. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:43]: As you think about your own graduate school experience and you think about what you experienced along the way, talk to me about a defining moment for yourself or a turning point that really shaped your academic or professional journey. Seana Goodson [00:16:57]: I'm an overachiever. So in this doctorate program, I'm still a 4.0 GPA. And I set those goals for myself every month. Like people say, oh, don't set yourself up for that. Don't set yourself up to saying, oh, I have to have a 4.0. For me, I do. I have to have a 4.0. It's a goal. Seana Goodson [00:17:15]: And that. That lets me know I'm working hard. I'm never satisfied. So for me, my turning point was one, was getting into this amazing program. That was a turning point for me. That's everything. Like, if you come in my house right now, my house is Mason blue. True is if I'm looking at everything right here in front of me, I'm on my desk, everything is amazing blue. Seana Goodson [00:17:36]: So that was a turning point for me in my life, period. Like, just to be able to say, I will be a part of this esteem Michigan went alumni. Do you know how amazing that feels? And just to meet other people within my network who are at Netflix. You know how many University of Michigan people we have there? I mean, tons. So we all are like, oh, just so proud. But the turning point for me is getting into the program. And then even though I'm successful, it makes me feel more successful because I know the journey I'm on. I know what I'm going to do. Seana Goodson [00:18:13]: I know that I'm going to become a subject matter expert for Michigan. I know that eventually I will teach at Michigan. That's my goal. When this entertainment world is all said and done, when I retire, which I don't know when it's going to be my dream and my goal is to become a part of Michigan faculty. And that's a fact. Everyone knows that. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:34]: So as you think of your experience through the MBA and through the DBA thus far, what's something you wish someone had told you before, before you started graduate school? Seana Goodson [00:18:44]: Take a beat. I mean, I know I'm talking in entertainment terms, but just to slow down, just take a beat. Because you get so excited. And I wish that someone would have told me that. I wish someone would have told me that all through my life, period. But coming into grad school, when you first start, it's like drinking water from a fire hydrant. It's so much Information coming at you at all times. So if you just take a beat and just sit back and just take that time, I wish someone have told me that. Seana Goodson [00:19:14]: So that's the one thing that I like to tell people, even my mentees. Take a beat, give yourself grace. You don't have to know everything all the time because you're not going to know everything. It's a lot of people out here that will know a lot more than you. For me, I suffer imposter syndrome. That's real. Everywhere I go, I suffer. No matter how high I get, no matter how many degrees I get, I'm still looking around. Seana Goodson [00:19:40]: It's like, did they make a mistake that they know that they let me in this program? Did they know that they're giving me this job? You go through that. And I wish I would have known about imposter syndrome and how to deal with it, but I'm coping with it now. I'm learning. Like, girl, you're smart. Chill out, you're okay. You'll be fine. So that's the one thing, because I know a lot of people will suffer that, especially coming into grad school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:03]: Finally, as we finish up today, as you think back to graduate school, at your MBA at the DBA level, and you're thinking about other people that are coming behind you. Beyond what you just said, are there other tips that you might want to offer anyone else that could help them find success in graduate school sooner? Seana Goodson [00:20:21]: Find your tribe. That's the one key thing. And University of Michigan has so many resources out here. It's so tons of resources. We have caps with Dr. Tookes. We have so many different programs, so many different organizations you can join. But like I said, once you start, like, just find your tribe. Seana Goodson [00:20:41]: Once you find your tribe, you're going to feel so at ease. You're going to see other people who are going through the same things that you're going through. For us at Umich Flint, there is no excuse because you have so many resources. You have the graduate school office, who is amazing. Teresa, who's over there, amazing. It's so many amazing people. And even if you're doing this online, please find the time to go to the campus, the most beautiful campus that there is, with the river running down the back. Please go. Seana Goodson [00:21:08]: The library. Beautiful. Just go. And once you do, I think you should touch that soil at least one time. And if you can't, just look at it online. It's absolutely beautiful. And stay in touch with the graduate school office because they are a wealth of knowledge. And a wealth of resources. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:25]: Well, Shawna, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you so much for everything that you shared today and for everything that you're doing as you're working toward finishing up that doctorate degree for yourself, that dissertation, and reaching the goals that you've set for yourself. I'm really excited to watch your journey in the future and to be able to see where you end up in the future as well. And I wish you all the best. Seana Goodson [00:21:49]: Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me and Go Blue! Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:21:52]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit UM Flint to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
From Psychology to Sports Management: Julia Stulock's Grad School Story
Graduate school can be an overwhelming journey, filled with big decisions, self-doubt, and transformation. In the latest episode of the "Victors in Grad School" podcast, Dr. Christopher Lewis welcomes Julia Stulock, Director of Recreational Services at the University of Michigan-Flint, to share her unique path from psychology undergraduate to sports management graduate student. If you're considering grad school, currently navigating your studies, or simply looking for inspiration, Julia's story is a must-hear. She opens up about how her undergraduate experience prepared her well—often in surprising ways—for the academic rigor ahead. As a commuter student at UM-Dearborn, Julia always thought she'd go into research or become a professor, but her campus involvement revealed an entirely new career path in collegiate recreation. This episode underscores the value of staying open to new opportunities and following where your interests lead. One of the central themes is the importance of choosing the right graduate program. Julia encourages prospective students to consider not just the academic aspects, but also location, assistantship opportunities, and overall fit. Her experience at the University of Connecticut was shaped not only by a robust sports management curriculum but by a graduate assistantship that paid for her school and provided a stipend—a key piece of advice for future applicants. Listeners will also appreciate Julia's candid discussion about the challenges of transitioning to graduate study: balancing school and work, adjusting to new expectations, and handling imposter syndrome. She highlights how building connections—through clubs, professional organizations, and classmate relationships—is essential for both emotional support and professional development. Her story is a reminder that community matters, and finding your people can make all the difference during tough times. Julia's advice is both practical and heartfelt: don't be afraid to try something new, take calculated risks, and seek out opportunities, even if they seem outside your comfort zone. Graduate school, she says, is "where I found my passion," and recommends reaching beyond the classroom to maximize your growth. Tune in to this episode to hear Julia's reflections on how graduate school changed her approach to problem-solving and time management, and learn what she wishes someone had told her before she started. For anyone at any stage of their academic journey, Julia's story is a powerful reminder that success often comes from embracing change, building connections, and following your passion. Ready for more inspiring stories and essential advice about thriving in graduate school? Listen to the full episode now! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week, I love being able to be on this journey with you because it is a journey not no matter where you are in this continuum of looking at graduate school, maybe you're at the very beginning and just starting to think about, should I do this? Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't, or maybe you've applied, waiting on that applicant that, that decision from your application, or maybe you just got accepted, or maybe you're in graduate school. No matter where you are, you are on a true journey. And this journey can go in many different directions. But this podcast is here to give you some tools for your toolbox to help you to be able to figure things out ahead of time, to give you some tools for the toolbox to help you figure out how to find success sooner. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:03]: Because that's what we all want. We all want to be successful in this academic journey that you're on. And whether it be from me, from a person in charge of graduate programs, I want all of my graduate students to be successful in this journey that they're pursuing. But personally, you do, too. And that's why every week, I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can share some of their own experiences in going through graduate school that can help you along the way. Today we got another great guest with us. Julia Stulock is with us. And Julia is the Director of Recreational Services at the University of Michigan, Flint, and she did her undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Dearborn and then went on from there. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:46]: So I'm really excited to be able to talk to her about her own experiences and to have her share that with you. Julia, thanks so much for being here today. Julia Stulock [00:01:53]: Yeah, really happy to be here and talk through my grad experience. Even though it was a little ways ago, it would be fun to walk down memory lane. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:00]: I'm really excited to be able to talk to you. And I know, as I mentioned, that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and you got a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology there. And at some point, at some point during that undergraduate experience, you made a decision to continue on to get a graduate degree. Bring me back to that point and talk to me about what was going through your head. That made you decide that grad school was the next step? Julia Stulock [00:02:27]: I think for me, because as you mentioned psychology major, I actually got my minor in stats. I always thought I was going to go to grad school. Whether it was because I wanted to become a professor or do research was the initial plan. I knew I'd have to get a degree beyond my bachelor's to do that. However, through my involvement on campus, I was involved in a club sport. By about my junior year, I started to realize through talking with other club sport leaders at other institutions, I was like, oh, there is a whole career path here in collegiate recreation that Dearborn doesn't have like a full recreation department. It's part of athletics. So I didn't realize, like, oh, this is like a whole separate department on some campuses. Julia Stulock [00:03:09]: So it was about halfway through my junior year that I realized I do still want to go to grad school, but I'm going to go for sports management instead of psychology like I originally planned. Because I saw this as an opportunity to keep doing something I love, but I need to get a degree in it to make that connection happen for my path. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:29]: So you decided on moving in a different path from psychology and moving a little bit of a different direction. So as you were making that decision for yourself, there are plenty of different programs that are out there in the area that you chose to study. And I'm sure that you went through your own process of exploring different programs, looking out there to determine what was the best fit for you. So talk to me about that process for yourself. I know that you ultimately decided to go to the University of Connecticut for their Master of Arts in Sports management. So talk to me about the process you went through to be able to identify the programs that you were considering and then what made you ultimately decide that the University of Connecticut was the right fit for you? Julia Stulock [00:04:15]: So I grew up in Michigan. I was a commuter student to Dearborn. A big part, I will admit for my search was I wanted to experience a different place. So I purposely looked only at out of state schools. I did my research online by looking through different rating website to see who had the best sports management degrees out there. There's also recreation management, which isn't as common as sports management. I didn't even know for sure that I wanted to work in collegiate recreation. Honestly, at that point I just knew I wanted to work in sports. Julia Stulock [00:04:48]: So I thought maybe that would look like an athletic department and CIA sports or possibly recreation. So I just was like, sports Management Recreation looked at the best programs out there. Also visited campuses. I was lucky enough to have friends scattered throughout the country that I could kind of go visit and stay with them and then go visit campus. So I looked anywhere from West Virginia University to University of Texas to a small school in Massachusetts, and I narrowed it down to, like, about my top six or seven to apply to. And as I was doing that, I also learned that there are these things called graduate assistantships or teaching assistantships at some schools. And that's ultimately what helped me decide on the University of Connecticut. I was accepted to a couple other programs, but I was offered a graduate assistantship in club sports at the University of Connecticut. Julia Stulock [00:05:38]: And they helped pay for my school and also gave me a stipend. That sealed the deal. There was another school I was considering. I'm like, oh, wait, you're going to pay me. I will absolutely go there. And they also had a great program to join for their sports management. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:52]: For every student, as they're transitioning from an undergraduate degree into a graduate degree, there is a definite transition that happens. There's a transition in the way that you're taught, the way that you're. The expectations that faculty have of you. And every person has to go through their own journey to be able to understand what that means for them and how to manage that situation for themselves. So as you were transitioning into graduate school, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success? And as you were going through that graduate school experience, what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout graduate school? Julia Stulock [00:06:32]: I think, thankfully, my undergraduate experience, I feel like, really prepared me very well for grad school. That, in fact, I had the same textbook for one of my statistics classes that I used in undergrad, and it was the same one. I'm like, I'm repeating a class here. Hold on. So I was really thankful for that, that Dearborn prepared me really well. And I think some of those changes you see going into grad school, right, is like you have these closer relationships with faculty who have smaller class sizes. And again, because Dearborn, just like Flint, has some of those smaller class sizes, I was already used to talking to faculty, not TAs, full professors. And I wasn't afraid of those conversations. Julia Stulock [00:07:11]: So I think that really set me up for success, that I didn't feel weird. Like, I had classes with 12 people. Our class size at UConn, my sports law class was small. We had a lot of serious, like, you know, detailed discussions. You couldn't not participate in those. So I think not being afraid to talk to your faculty is a big key to success. From my experience, just doing well in your undergrad classes, paying attention, because you never know when it might overlap or just it's building on top of something in grad school that it might feel like, well, why do I need this? I'm going into sports management. Statistics was required. Julia Stulock [00:07:49]: There were two required classes in grad school. I still had to take it. So not just assuming you won't need it again was really important. And I think one of the bigger challenges for me transitioning to grad school was that work school balance. Because of my graduate assistantship, I was working a lot of hours there, and that proved to be challenging in terms of making sure I was setting aside enough time, getting enough sleep. I was also not commuting any longer. So, like, being away from home and family, and it was more just about building those bonds so that you would have the support system. So, like, friends joining a club on campus so that I would not just be on my own and I had those support systems in place far away from home was really important because I can actually remember thinking at the end of my first semester, I would not have stayed at UConn unless I had joined the running club there, because that's how I made my friends. Julia Stulock [00:08:43]: That's how I felt like I belonged somewhere. That was really important because I think I would have left. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:48]: You know, I hear from a lot of graduate students that beyond the. Especially if they go away from home, beyond the separation anxiety and some of the other anxieties that they run into, there's this feeling of, am I meant to be here? Am I good enough? Can I live up to the expectations? Which comes down to what people call the imposter syndrome. And I guess as you think back to your own experience, how did that imposter syndrome or self doubt impact you and how did you handle it? Julia Stulock [00:09:15]: Yes, there were times, like I mentioned, that first semester was just hard, learning all these new things. I was in student affairs for the first time as well, because I had been an intern in the athletic department at Dearborn, which at the time, I didn't even know anything about student affairs. I don't know if we had a division. I had no idea what I was doing. There was a lot of learning about student development that, like, yeah, it made me go, like, what did I sign up for? Am I supposed to be here? Is this supposed to be this hard? And trying to think of, like, how did I overcome that? I think it was more just like talking with my classmates because a lot of us had graduate assistantships across campus. And it was reassuring to hear that other people had those same thoughts, that it wasn't just me. Well, and everyone can't not belong here, right? There was that common thread of, wow, we feel like this is a lot. And also just hearing sometimes stories of like, wow, I thought I had a hard day, but theirs was harder. Julia Stulock [00:10:11]: Just commiserating with each other was really helpful. And then overall, just being able to reflect on, like, this is just a part of growth. It is difficult and accepting that that comes with it. And again, those connection pieces of just finding people you connect with, where I felt like I really found my group towards the end of my first year. And that made the second year feel like I belong because I, I just had those connections built in where when you're the new kid, it's really hard to feel connected because you, you. It takes time to build those connections. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:40]: One thing that comes to mind, you know, earlier you talked about when you were looking at different programs, you looked at sports management, you looked at recreation management. You're currently in more of a recreational services, recreation management type of role at the University of Michigan, Flint. If you look back and I know your graduate degree was a, a number of years back, as you mentioned at the beginning, but if you had to do it, would you choose the same program or would you choose a different path? Why or why not? Julia Stulock [00:11:07]: I would do it all over again. For me, at the time when I was trying to decide between the two paths, it was more out of. I just didn't know enough about either one to decide for sure. And I knew I have two small kids. I knew that I wanted to have a family one day, or at least I hoped I would. And I saw the lack of work life balance, at least from my counterparts and my classmates in the athletic world. The amount of late nights and weekends and the hours like, I mean, not that I had a cakewalk, but man, theirs just seemed a lot more difficult. And I saw that, that just seemed to be a common thread across athletic departments and that didn't fit with what I was looking for. Julia Stulock [00:11:49]: I still have friends to this day that work in that field and they love it. And you've probably asked them, they wouldn't do anything different either. But for me, I knew I was looking for something that had more of that be balance. That wouldn't mean I was working every night and every weekend. So I would absolutely do it again. I would go to UConn again as well, because I will say I was challenged, but I grew a lot. I learned a lot. It is where, as I mentioned, I was introduced to student affairs and it is where I realized I really had this passion for collegiate recreation and that it could be something for everyone and not just the best of the best of athletes among us. Julia Stulock [00:12:28]: That it can be for everyone the best of the best and those just looking to have fun or to start a fitness journey. I was lucky enough to be a part of founding a governing body for a club sport which really opened my eyes to that too of just like the impact it can make on student experience and lifelong things too, like finding a partner or lifelong friends. And that's why it still keeps me here, is that I found that passion so I would not change a thing at all. And glad for the experience I had. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:59]: I know you mentioned earlier the importance of that running club as well as some finding that group for yourself. And sometimes students kind of buckle down and they think, especially with being more and more programs being remote from a campus, sometimes it's not always that easy to make those connections. I guess as you think back to the experience that you had and you were in a program that was in person and on a campus, talk to me about that connection and building those connections and the importance of being engaged beyond the classroom and what that did for you as a student. Julia Stulock [00:13:34]: Me being engaged outside the classroom is what helped me find my passion and my career path. But when thinking specifically about grad school. Right. I mentioned that running club because that was my in person connection. However, it helped me expand outside of our campus because this governing body that I mentioned is called nerca, it's National Intercollegiate Running Club Association. At the time I was the membership coordinator. So I got to talk with club leaders from across across the country about their running clubs and make friends and connections that way and learn about club sports that way. About how all the different ways that their departments run and how you know what type of support they had or didn't have. Julia Stulock [00:14:15]: And that was equally as important to my development and growth as what I was getting on campus. Because again, I still have those friendships to this day, decades later that are so meaningful in terms of again the impact we're making or just having a friend that you could call up somewhere and say like what do you think about this? Or what are you seeing? Because maybe they work in my field. So those. I think it's more just about finding like you mentioned that connection outside of the classroom. Whether it's a student org on campus, maybe it's volunteering with a group somewhere in your interest in your field, maybe it's reaching out to a professional to pick their brain and you end up finding a great mentor. You have to reach beyond that classroom because I don't know, for me personally, it's just where I felt like I got the most growth. Because as much as you can try to make a project in a class mirror the real world, it's never going to quite get it right fully if it's just a short couple week project. But that's where I got the most meaningful lessons and connections, was through finding those groups and connections outside of the class. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:21]: You know, as you think about your graduate school experience and what you're doing today, how did graduate school change the way that you think work or approach problems? Julia Stulock [00:15:32]: I think probably more just on the proactive side because I mentioned that the time management piece I had to learn between balancing school and work was just more than I had experienced before. So it was more this forward thinking and planning and whether it's writing out your assignments in your planner or planning out what you have going on at work so you can be ahead of it. For me, I am a planner. I like to think ahead on things. I want agenda bullet points in advance. And that's not just because I'm trying to get ahead of the curve. It's so that I can have time to problem solve. Because problem solving on the fly might not result in the best end result than if you can go, oh, I have a problem, but I have two weeks to solve it instead of two hours. Julia Stulock [00:16:17]: So, yeah, it's more that just. I think it's that pre planning and thinking, okay, what do I have coming up? Is there anything I can do now to help myself so that I don't get myself in a pickle? Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:28]: And as you think back to grad school and you think back to the journey that you went on throughout your time there, what's something that you wish that someone had told you before you started grad school? Julia Stulock [00:16:39]: I really wish someone had explained to me what graduate assistantships were. I really feel like I stumbled into what I got and I was very lucky. Such a good experience. But golly, like what? Oh, I just wish I had understood. I thought they just paid for school. I didn't understand. It came with a stipend until I literally got my offer letter in the mail. I went, oh, they pay me to. Julia Stulock [00:17:02]: I had no idea. And I think that would have changed. I don't even think I know it would have changed how I approached my search because I realized that there were some programs that there's one in particular, I'll leave them unnamed. I didn't realize that basically you need to have a GA position in order to get into their program, but I didn't know they existed. And they start those search processes so early. Like it could have been like they open applications in November, December. I had no idea. And it would have really helped me because I could have gotten in my. Julia Stulock [00:17:31]: I thought it was you applied for school and then you applied for the graduate assistantships or the teaching assistantships. So just someone that could have helped explain that that is there and can help potentially pay for grad school and maybe inform where you go if you're willing to go where the money is and you have open doors where you're willing to go, that would have been immensely helpful. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:52]: Finally, as you think back to that entire experience and you think about other people that are considering going to graduate school for themselves, what are some tips that you might offer others beyond what you just said about the graduate assistantship that might help students find success sooner? Julia Stulock [00:18:08]: Don't be afraid to try something new. I know it sounds cliche, but truly, whether you're going to grad school full time or you're working and going to grad school, you might not have another opportunity to take a risk that doesn't have really far reaching implications if it doesn't work out. So like waiting few years after you have your master's and going like, I really, oh, I really wish I'd try that. I'd have to leave my job to do that. Don't be afraid to take that risk in grad school if you're not sure. Like I was talking about like athletics, recreation, what do I want to do? Right? I started talking to people and realized, oh, maybe that's not what I want to do. Or maybe you apply for an internship to get more information experience in somewhere or to just shadow someone. Don't have to win an internship, just shadow someone. Julia Stulock [00:18:58]: If you're not sure, take that risk and reaching out or trying something new because maybe you'll find out something isn't for you or maybe you'll find that new passion. You're like, this helps me decide where I want to go. Because the more committed you can be to a goal, I think the sooner you can find success because when you have that full commitment, interest and passion, you can find that trifecta. You'll find success because work will feel less like work and more like fun, hopefully. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:26]: Well, Julie, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. Thank you for sharing all that you learned in your own experience, and I truly wish you all the best. Julia Stulock [00:19:34]: Thank you so much. It was my pleasure. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:36]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning opportunity, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad office at umflint. Eduardo.
Mentorship, Mistakes, and Mastery: Succeeding in Graduate School
Are you considering grad school or currently on the graduate education journey? The latest episode of "Victors in Grad School" offers a wealth of insightful advice, candid reflections, and actionable tips for students at every stage of their academic careers. Hosted by Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at University of Michigan-Flint, this episode features guest Lucas Langdon, Assistant Dean of Students at the University of Michigan - Flint and a current PhD candidate. Personal Journeys: Decisions and Mentorship The conversation begins with Lucas Langdon sharing his unique path from undergraduate studies to a thriving career in student affairs and eventually to graduate studies. He emphasizes the importance of mentorship and how key advisors helped him realize his passions could turn into a profession. For first-generation students, like Lucas, pursuing graduate studies can be daunting; strong mentors and professional opportunities, such as temporary staff roles after graduation, can be transformational. Choosing the Right Program One theme that resonates throughout the episode is the process of selecting a graduate program. Lucas Langdon recalls nearly rushing into a decision due to deadlines but ultimately taking the time to research top programs, visit campuses, and evaluate the fit. The lesson: don't let urgency override intention. Prospective students are encouraged to engage deeply with programs, faculty, and campus environments before making their choice. Finding Financial and Professional Support The episode also highlights the value of graduate assistantships. Both Langdon and Dr. Christopher Lewis discuss how assistantships—whether in student affairs or other fields—provide not only crucial financial support but also practical experience relevant to students' future careers. Listeners are advised to inquire early about assistantship opportunities, scholarships, and tuition benefits—sometimes available through employers. Balancing Life and Studies Graduate school often means balancing academic, professional, and personal responsibilities. Lucas Langdon provides honest advice about managing these demands, sharing his own experiences juggling full-time work and doctoral studies. He underscores the necessity of creating boundaries, finding peer support, and maintaining perseverance—even when motivation wavers. Building Networks and Planning Ahead Finally, listeners learn that faculty and cohort peers become an invaluable professional network. Lucas Langdon advises students to nurture these relationships and focus papers and projects on topics of personal passion, laying the groundwork for future research. Ready for more inspiring and practical grad school insights? Tune into "Victors in Grad School" for expert advice and personal stories that can help you confidently chart your own path to graduate school success. TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and. experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. You know, every week I love being able to sit down, talk to you, to work with you as you're going through this journey that you're going on, this graduate school journey. And no matter where you are in this journey, there are things that you can do right now, right now, while you're sitting there listening, that can help you to be better prepared and better successful in this graduate school journey that you're on. You could just be starting to look and thinking about graduate school. You might have applied, you might have gotten accepted. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:52]: Maybe you're in graduate school. There are things, no matter where you are in this continuum, that you can learn from others that have gone before you that will help you to be successful in this, this journey. And that's why this podcast exists every week. I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can share those experiences with you to help you to learn, to grow, and to be able to get some new tools for your toolbox to help you find success sooner. Today we got another great guest, Lucas Langdon, who's with us. And Lucas is the assistant Dean of students at the University of Michigan, Flint. And Lucas has his own journey of going to graduate school, and he's currently a graduate student right now. So we're gonna be talking to him about this experience and this journey that he went on himself. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:45]: And I'm really excited to have him here. Lucas, thanks so much. Lucas Langdon [00:01:47]: Thanks for having me, Chris. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:50]: You know, I'm really excited to have you here today. And I know, I love starting these conversations, really making you go back in time, because I know that you did your undergraduate work at Eastern Michigan University. You did your Bachelor of Science in English Liter and Language and also Communication and Theater Arts. And then there was some point in time where you made a decision. You made a decision that you were going to continue on. And what I would love for you to do is to take me back in time. Take me back to that moment, that point in time where you said to yourself, I'm not done. I want to continue, and I want to move forward and get that graduate degree. Lucas Langdon [00:02:32]: So, as you know, my career has been in student affairs, and that started as a student who was very involved. I did something that would be unthinkable today. I delayed my undergraduate graduation by a year because I was involved in so many sort of outside of the classroom experiences that I wasn't ready to give up on. And so I kind of deferred that and during that year of deferment, really struggled with what am I going to do with my life? One of my mentors sort of made the obvious connection for me. You can continue to do the kinds of things that you're really passionate about here as a professional. And so, as luck would have it, there was a temporary staff opening at Eastern about the time I was graduating. And so I was able to jump into a staff role for that first year while I was figuring out what grad school looks like and had the ability to have those mentors who were supervising me there walk me through because I was a first gen student. So the idea of college was challenging, but the idea of graduate school was completely unheard of in my family. Lucas Langdon [00:03:32]: So having those mentors kind of talk me through, what does a grad school search look like? What are the important things to think about and sort of save me from a couple of maybe hate hasty decisions I could have made there. And then as that first temporary position was coming to an end, another one opened up, and that one sort of filled my time until I started graduate school the next fall at Florida State University. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:57]: So, as you just said, you decided to attend Florida State University, and it sounds like you did your due diligence in trying to look at different options and look at different schools and try to decide for yourself what was the best fit for you. Talk to me about that process, what you did to go through that. You mentioned avoiding some mistakes. So maybe talk about some of those possible mistakes you may have made and what made you finally ultimately choose that Florida State was the best. Lucas Langdon [00:04:27]: So what I was really alluding to with the mistakes is I almost rushed my search. And what I mean by that is I decided a little late in the cycle of things at that time with application deadlines, that I was going to go on this graduate school journey, as you put it. And almost every school's deadline had passed. All of the ones that my mentors were recommending as good student affairs graduate programs had passed, with the exception of one, which I won't name. But I didn't end up going there. I'm sure they're fine, but I had hastily decided, oh, I'll just apply to this, the only one I can apply to, having never been to campus to see it or really know anything about it. And So I sort of wisened up and decided, okay, no, I'm going to wait. This employment opportunity with the 10 position luckily came up. Lucas Langdon [00:05:07]: That afforded me the ability to do that, to wait a little bit longer and do a graduate school. The search the right way and what the right way looked like for me in my field of higher education, student affairs, was really doing some research into what are the top programs in my field, setting up some visits with them and at the time was willing to travel across the country and start over somewhere else for a little, for two years for graduate school. And so I convinced one of my buddies to do a road trip with me and I did back to back visits at Florida State University of Florida, University of South Carolina. And I think there might have been one more in there and at the time had pretty, pretty high rankings in my graduate program that I was interested in. So I went. I probably made some naive cosmetic assumptions about the schools that now having been in the field for a long time, I maybe wouldn't care so much about. But what it came down to is how I felt when I was there. And the reason that Florida State sort of won that, not that it was a competition, but won the competition for me, what a prize was that when I got there, they made sure that there were folks from the program to talk to me. Lucas Langdon [00:06:10]: They showed me around. It already felt like they were treating me like a human being and not a number. They did have a really good reputation at the time. I think they, they might have been the number one or number two student affairs program in the country at that time. And they were extremely welcoming of me. Now what? The other piece I didn't know that I wish I had was about what graduate assistantships were all about. And this might be buried in your question somewhere, but so I didn't initially know that that was a thing you have to plan for and apply for in advance and all that. So when I went to, I forget if it was a visit day or if it was like an orientation. Lucas Langdon [00:06:42]: There just happened to be a vacancy in one. And so somebody had got a different role and moved on or something. And I, I got the assistantship and that paid for my room and board, my tuition, working for housing, not in a live in position the first year, but that was huge financially for me to be able to take a graduate assistantship which I knew nothing about, but to take this job that they told me would pay for all of this stuff and give me practical experience while I was doing the academic side of the program. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:12]: And one thing I'll. I'll mention to you that that are listening about graduate assistantships is that not every program requires an assist assistantship. Sometimes they do. So like the program that Lucas is talking about. His program required that students had assistantships, and that's a part of the program. But there are other programs that that's not the case. There may be ones that are available that you can apply for, but you need to do your research into that. Some assistantships can be full time, some assistantships can be part time, and the benefits can vary vastly based on campus and what you're doing. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:07:53]: So you do have to do that research to be able to look into that, to make sure you understand what it is, what you have to do to apply and what you have to do to be considered. But don't automatically assume that an assistantship is going to be waiting for you, because at the campus that you choose to go to, there may not be assistantships, but there may be scholarships or other opportunities too. So you think you choose to. Lucas Langdon [00:08:13]: And those are the right questions to ask Chris, that I didn't know to ask, which is, are they the same timeline for application for both of them? Are they different timelines is like you said, is it? Everybody gets one if you get into the program. And as the market for graduate students in student affairs has shifted, some of those requirements have shifted. So at Florida State at the time, you weren't going to be probably a graduate assistant in a student affairs office if you weren't in the program for student affairs. But I know a lot of schools now, they need graduate students, and so they're a little less picky about which field you're studying while you're there. If you have the time to commit to the work of the assistantship, you might still be able to pull that off even if you're not going into higher education, which opens up a lot more opportunities for folks who might otherwise basically be looking at is there a teaching assistant job or a research assistant job? And that's really all that you used to be able to pick from. But now there's all kinds of offices. As the field of higher education manages financial difficulties for lots of reasons, the number of professional staff going down in some cases means they might be more willing to take on more graduate assistants do the work. So I would encourage anyone, if your life will fit a graduate assistantship role financially and experientially. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:09:26]: It's really a great opportunity now as any student moves into a graduate program. Actually, no, I want to ask another question first. Now, I also mentioned you're a current graduate student now, and I know that after a number of years of working, you decided to continue your education and you decided to work work on a PhD and you're working on that right now. So same question. Talk to me about that point in time. What made you decide that you wanted to take that step at that point in your career to go back to school after working for a While on a PhD and you, you ended up choosing to attend Eastern Michigan University? Same question. Why did you decide to attend Eastern University? Lucas Langdon [00:10:08]: My PhD question has a lot to do with sort of the ceiling for advancement in my career. And so I've been in this program now for over 10 years. Like I'm going to have to file an extension to be able to graduate for a couple of reasons that sort of, you know, Covid and some things sort of delayed that. But I had mentors telling me, you got to get the PhD. You're working at a university that will pay for. I was working at Eastern as at the time, as a director of campus Life. So Eastern would pay the tuition part of the bill for that, which amounted to, I don't know, 20, $25,000 worth of an education that I didn't have to pay for doesn't mean it was free. I had to pay all kinds of fees that I'm not working there. Lucas Langdon [00:10:45]: I obviously pay for the credits, but it was a huge chunk of financial burden that I didn't have because I worked there. So if you can get a job at the place where you want to study, that's often a tuition benefit comes along with that. So at the time, I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do next, but I knew it would be a step up, hopefully in my career. And I was looking at vice presidents, student affairs jobs, or sociovi presidents, or in this case, assistant in a student's jobs. And I knew that to be competitive in the field, I was going to need to have that credential under my belt to be operating at a higher level of leadership at a higher education institution. The credential is important, especially on the academic side, to be able to be considered a colleague by academic peers, being able to say, yes, I've gone through the same academic, can we call it academic hazing that you've gone through. I've earned this. I know my stuff. Lucas Langdon [00:11:32]: So all of those things, would I do it again? I don't know. It depends on what day you ask me and what part of the stress of the PhD program I'm in. But I had all of those mentors and sort of the career path telling me, you probably need to do this, so you might as well start now. And I'll also add that when I worked for five years at an institution in Kentucky, that they didn't have a PhD program, but they had an MBA program that I could have done for free twice in the time that I was there. I didn't think I was going to be there that long, but I liked it. And I ended up staying. And I regretted not taking advantage of that benefit of education. Could have just had that extra credential and that knowledge. Lucas Langdon [00:12:06]: And so when I got to Eastern, they had the PhD program. And I thought, I can't make the same mistake twice. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:12]: So true. And a lot of times when individuals are working at any type of company, one of the things that sometimes students don't look into is going to that HR office and saying, do you have an education benefit? It's always a great place to go and ask. It doesn't hurt to go in and just ask the question. They could say no, they could say yes. But always look at the fine print. Make sure you know what you're signing and make sure you know what the hooks are. Because sometimes there are hooks to the financial aspects to that as well. But it's always a possible financial possibility for you as a student. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:50]: As you're thinking about graduate education now, Lucas, as you transitioned into your master's degree, into your doctorate degree, there are transitions that you go through. Now you went from undergrad into a graduate program, and there's a transition there because the way you're taught as an undergraduate student is different than the way you're taught in the expectations that faculty have of you as a master's student. But then going from work into a PhD student, again, different way, different way of being challenged, different way of looking at things. So think to those transitions. You were able to find success in your master's degree, you've been able to be successful in your PhD degree. And as you found success in graduate school, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success as you transitioned into the program, and what have you had to do to maintain that success throughout the steps, throughout the program? Lucas Langdon [00:13:56]: So start by saying, I don't think I transitioned particularly effectively or intentionally into a master's program, because again, I had no idea. To me, this just felt like, like the next year of college. But what I came to learn very quickly is that even more than undergraduate, the things that were going to be Important to my success were the peer network in my classes and the faculty relationships, which are important in undergrad, but even more so in the master's work. So that transition was initially maybe a little rocky. Again, I sort of picked up and moved to a different part of the country. So I knew no one there, knew nothing about this thing I had decided to jump into. But luckily, because I had that assistantship role on campus, that put me into a network of other graduates, graduate assistants who would be taking classes with me. And we're also having parallel sort of job experiences that, that could sort of bond us together as well. Lucas Langdon [00:14:47]: And if you know anything about working in housing, you have a lot of weird things that happen when you're running residence halls. So could have got those things to bond over. And so creating that social network there, which I was a little slow to develop because I just didn't know how important it was going to be, that became monumentally important. And then also the people who are in your program with you and your faculty become your initial network professionally. So I always tell students, even the undergradu level, particularly your major faculty, that's your first network. And so they are the ones who know the field you want to enter. They're your first recommendations. More importantly, they are your first connections when it comes time to get a job. Lucas Langdon [00:15:22]: And so those two things and then sort of the expectation, at least at that time at Florida State was if you're here, you are also participating in sort of a national level of professional development. Right. And so being involved in our national profession professional conference, my program hosted at the time a national professional conference. So we were sort of volun told we were going to be involved as volunteers at this thing and helping out, which turned out to be a remarkable experience. And I got to meet some of the scholars in my field who had come to this conference. Right. And so taking those opportunities, I think helped. Back to your transition question. Lucas Langdon [00:15:56]: Helped transition mentally to oh, this is kind of professional. Like I'm not quite a professional yet, I'm a paraprofessional, but I have to start thinking like one. And so those kind of experiences help put you in the mindset of that and then the transition to the PhD. I will tell you, it is so much easier to be a student when all you're doing doing is be a student and maybe the graduate assistant or you know, a part time job on the side, but as a full time professional trying to take classes. Been out of the habit for a while too. Right. So that's another thing I would say to students, thinking about any of these transitions is when to do it is important. As I had been so far out of my master's program by the time that I started the PhD that I had forgotten how to student, my study skills, the ability to sit down and read academic materials. Lucas Langdon [00:16:40]: Like I had to dust off all of those skill sets. The flip side of that is because I had waited a while. I have real world experience to draw knowledge from when I'm in those classes, having those discussions, so it meant more. And so when in my field, when students ask me, and I think this is really specific to higher education, but maybe some other fields ask me if they, when they should do these things, I would say wait a little while so you've got some professional experience. And then further, I get into this program, wait a while to see. Is this something you really need to get to the goal that you have? Because if it is, great. If it's not, it's a whole lot of investment in time and energy and tears and anxiety attacks and whatever else comes with, with doing. It's a big lift to do a PhD. Lucas Langdon [00:17:23]: The coursework other than the research coursework, not terribly harder than master's work if you can work in groups and you can read and you can synthesize information, do a lit review here and there, those sorts of things. But when you get to the self directed research parts of that, it is a lot more than just writing papers as an English major in college. So that transition was, was a little rocky. I took too many classes at first, was trying to max out the amount of credits that I could take so I could get through it. And then maybe two semesters in, I realized, no, I have to do this one at a time. I just for me at that time, with everything in my life, I had to do just one class at a time. But I worked through it and checked them off one by one. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:18:00]: Well, a lot of graduate students and individuals that are looking to be graduate students are balancing a lot of things. They may be working, they may have families, they may have other responsibilities, they're doing other things along with, with this. Talk to me about balance and what you had to do. And maybe it was more so balancing things at the PhD level than when you were a Master's student. But even now, as you have been a PhD student, what have you had to do to balance school, work, family, any other personal responsibilities while you've been trying to be a student as well? Lucas Langdon [00:18:38]: Yeah. So great question. I don't really even think the concept of balance occurred to me in my master's program because it was my, my job and my. Yeah, everything all sort of bundled into one. And then my second year of the program, I moved from an assistantship that wasn't live in to a live in graduate hall director position. And so I was literally living where I worked and everything just kind of spilled over. Balance was probably awful, right? Like just in retrospect, there were probably no boundaries at all and I probably worked way more hours than I should have. But it also felt fine because I was young and I had the energy. Lucas Langdon [00:19:09]: When you get later in life and you're doing the PhD, that balance is a little harder. And I think, like I said, sort of figuring out what I could take on each semester was an important realization that I had what my capacity was. I don't have kids, so I am amazed by folks who balance that in addition to. I sort of look at, in awe at those folks because that's. And there's a whole bunch of them in my program. Some of them finished before I did and did a great job of it. But when I was coming in, they'd sort of tell you, don't take a new job, don't get married, don't make any big life decisions that are going to add because. And of course you have to, right? Because life happens whether you want it to or not. Lucas Langdon [00:19:45]: But they sort of warn you that balance is going to be a problem. What I didn't take into was when I got to the stage where I'm mostly self directed, right? Like that's the. One of the huge differences, I think, between undergrad and graduate work and definitely between Master's and PhD is the degree of autonomy you have to move yourself forward. And the lack of people sort of kicking you if you're, if you're behind you get a good chair and they're going to encourage you. But really it's your timeline. And so I maybe let the balance shift too far in the other direction for a while with that and have just maybe in the last year really decided, okay, I do need to sacrifice part of my weekend every week or every other week just has to be devoted to this so that I can finish this thing. And that's hard. Again, when you're used to, you have a workday that goes sometimes till 6, 7, 8 o' clock if you work in my field and then you go home and like the last thing I want to do is look at a computer screen and try to write right now. Lucas Langdon [00:20:41]: But at some point you just have to suck it up and do it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:20:44]: So as you think back to the opportunities that you've had both at the master's level, at the doctorate level, and as you think about this entirety of your graduate education and you think of others that are thinking about graduate school and thinking about possibly taking that jump into becoming a graduate student themselves, what are some tips that you might offer them as they consider graduate education that would help them find success sooner? Lucas Langdon [00:21:10]: I mean, I'll briefly summarize some of the ones I've already mentioned, which are if you can find an assistantship, it's a great opportunity. Your faculty or your first network, make sure to get to know the folks in your cohort because they are also part of that network, but more importantly, they are going through it with you. So that your support system. It also helps to figure out which ones are bright enough to be in the groups when you got to do group work, because that is in most programs, probably a part of what you're going to have to do. And one of the things that luckily somebody did tell me early on, if you can, if there's something you're really passionate about in your field, anytime you get the choice of what you're going to study, do that thing and save all that research. And so I did that in my master's program. And so when I started my PhD, I didn't know exactly what my dissertation was going to be on, but I knew the area and I had, well, at that time you had printed copies of things. I had a big box of printed articles ready to go. Lucas Langdon [00:22:00]: I needed to find some updated ones, but something to start me off. And so throughout the PhD program too, whenever I had the opportunity for my self directed work in a class to be what I wanted it to be, it was all moving towards the same focus topic so that I wasn't duplicating my efforts later on, if that makes sense. So anytime you can do that, think ahead to, to where you might need that. Save everything. If you know you're going to continue the education. Save everything. You never know what going to go back. Now when I get this one, I am done. Lucas Langdon [00:22:29]: No more classes. So there'll be a big bonfire. But up until here, I've got everything that I've ever done academically in my graduate work and it has helped me tremendously. I think I already mentioned the faculty relationships, but I'll say that one again, just because some of the most interesting conversations I had in my master's program were with the faculty there. Most of them have retired now, obviously, because that was a long time ago. But I got to work with some of the minds that were leading my field. And so getting to know what your faculty's interests are, what their research is, if you can partner with them on that. For me, it ended up being helping at those conferences. Lucas Langdon [00:23:02]: But if I was a graduate student, work in the sciences, there might be some really cool research you could get your hands on. Working with a faculty member. There might be something you get to publish with a faculty member in any number of fields. So don't sleep on that relationship. It can be really valuable. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:15]: I really appreciate your time today. Thank you for sharing all of these amazing tips with us today. And I wish you the best as you continue your own graduate education. And I know you're going to make it. You're going to get there, you're going to finish this up and get past what's called abd, everyone. Abd. You don't want to stay there when you're working on your doctorate. So he's working forward, he's going to get this done. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:39]: And next time we talk to him, he's going to be Dr. Langdon. So, so soon to be Dr. Langdon. Thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. Lucas Langdon [00:23:53]: Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:23:54]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].
Communicate with Confidence: Tips for Graduate Student Success
Effective communication isn't just a buzzword; it's a core skill for success in graduate school and in life. In the latest Victors in Grad School episode, "Communicating Your Needs with Confidence," Dr. Christopher Lewis and Reilly Chabie tackle a challenge every grad student encounters: advocating for yourself and expressing what you truly need to thrive. Reilly Chabie, a regular contributor, dives deep into why communication matters—not only academically but across every dimension of wellness. She introduces listeners to the "balancing act" every student faces, emphasizing the Eight Dimensions of Wellness (emotional, environmental, physical, etc.) and how imbalances can directly impact our ability to communicate effectively. Stress, a common companion for grad students, gets special attention. Reilly details how physical, emotional, and cognitive symptoms of stress can interfere with clear communication—reminding us that a little stress is normal, but chronic stress can sow confusion and erode confidence. Knowing yourself and recognizing when stress is impacting your communication is the first step toward improvement. The podcast unpacks common barriers to effective communication. From emotional dysregulation and lack of trust, to power dynamics, cultural differences, imposter syndrome, and assumptions, Reilly paints a honest picture of challenges students face daily. She references "The Four Horsemen" communication pitfalls (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling), illustrating why learning new healthy habits is vital. Listeners are guided through the spectrum of communication styles—passive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and assertive. The goal? To build assertive communication skills that foster respectful dialogue and collaborative problem-solving. Reilly provides actionable tips: plan ahead, create the right environment for conversations, use "I" statements, pay attention to nonverbal cues, and actively listen—not just talk. Perhaps most compelling is the discussion around boundaries. Setting and communicating personal limits is crucial to self-advocacy and maintaining healthy relationships in grad school. If you're navigating group projects, research collaboration, or simply balancing multiple life roles, this episode is packed with insights and practical advice. Whether you're a new student or a seasoned grad, you'll find wisdom that applies beyond the classroom. Ready to advocate for yourself and build confidence in your communication? Listen to this episode and start your journey toward more effective, fulfilling conversations—both in and outside grad school. Looking for actionable communication resources? Don't miss this episode—you'll be glad you did! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:03]: We have conversations with students, alumni and. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:06]: Experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Hello and welcome. Thanks so much for being here today. I'm Dr. Lewis, the director of graduate programs here at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited that you're here today because today we're going to be talking about a really important topic. We're going to be talking about about the importance of communicating and advocating for yourself. Because as a graduate student, you definitely have to be able to advocate for yourself and you gotta be able to talk to people and tell people what you need to be able to be successful in this graduate school journey that you're on. And today we got a great guest with us. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:51]: Riley Chaby is with us again. And I'm really excited to have Riley here today to talk about this really important topic with you. So I'm going to turn it over to her. Riley, thanks so much for being here today. Reilly Chabie [00:01:02]: Absolutely. Thank you so much for the introduction, Dr. Lewis. I appreciate it. And as Dr. Lewis mentioned, communicating your needs is a crucial part of not only being a graduate student, but also just kind of existing in the world. So I hope today's presentation is helpful in all contexts of your life. To kind of get started, we'll go over a brief overview as to what you can expect. Reilly Chabie [00:01:26]: We're going to talk a little bit about something I like to call the Balancing act of just being a Graduate Student. That'll come up here shortly. I'm going to talk about why does communication matter? Just kind of brief things that are related to you as a graduate student, but also just why communication matters in the grand scheme of life. We're going to talk about some barriers that we might experience for effective communication. And then we're going to learn how to communicate with confidence, some tips, tricks, things to kind of consider in order to navigate these challenges. All right. It would not be a CAPS presentation if we didn't talk a little bit about the eight dimensions of wellness. If you've ever seen any of my presentations before, you have definitely seen me talk about these dimensions. Reilly Chabie [00:02:18]: And interestingly enough, most of U of M Flint's Division of Student affairs programming focuses and aims to provide supports that relate to these eight dimensions of wellness, which interest. Interestingly enough, my conversation today does relate to the eight dimensions of wellness. So very briefly, the eight dimensions of wellness essentially creates a visual representation of all of the aspects that make us up as a person. So we all have. And kind of looking at the wheel on my screen Here we all have emotional connections, we have environmental connections, physical connections, so on and so forth. And all of these areas require our attention at any given point during our day to day functioning. That kind of leads into this balancing act that while you're functioning as a graduate student, you are absolutely trying to balance all of these dimensions in a way that makes you kind of feel fulfilled, makes you feel like you're achieving the things that you want to achieve, and ultimately you utilize these to kind of guide your everyday decisions. Now, a big part of this is that if any of these dimensions are feeling a little out of whack or we feel like we're not engaging in them as much as we would like to, that does disrupt our general functioning, which can very easily lead to a lot of different frustrations and truthfully plays a large role into why we struggle with communicating the things that we need. Reilly Chabie [00:03:59]: Right. That I might not know that I'm physically hurting until I really think about it. It. And if I don't take care of that physical nature, I might be more irritable or you know, struggling in a particular area and having a hard time communicating that. So it's helpful to kind of put this into context with our communication patterns and this knowledge will kind of help us. What's the right word? It's going to help us identify what needs we actually have and really play into the types of communications that we need to provide. So kind of keep that in mind as we move forward here. I also want to touch a little bit on stress symptoms specifically, because if we're considering how the eight dimensions of wellness allow us to function, and when one of them isn't being focused on as much or is struggling in some context, we ultimately will experience some level of stre. Reilly Chabie [00:05:03]: And the symptoms and kind of definitions on your screen here also help us to see when our communication is not being effective. Right. That if we're not communicating as deeply or as importantly as we'd like to be, we might experience chronic stress. So a brief definition of stress. This is our physical, emotional and cognitive reactions to certain demands, threats, or just changes in our daily routines. And I bet you anything as a graduate student, you have a lot of changes going on on your day to day experience. Whether you're in classes, going to work, studying, maybe taking care of kiddos, just trying to navigate all of these different roles, you absolutely are going to have differences and changes in your routine when these things happen, though, we might experience some level of stress. I think it's important to note that general levels of Stress or are actually pretty okay. Reilly Chabie [00:06:05]: Stress can be a really big motivating factor in how we navigate the world and ultimately leads to kind of doing our best work. Sometimes that, you know, for example, if I was stressed about giving this presentation, I might work really hard to provide you the best material. Right. And make sure that I'm providing things that would be helpful for this. But the issue becomes when we experience these stress system, excuse me, symptoms intensely and chronically. So it's not just a here and there experience, but more so it's every day or every other day, or it's so intense that we feel like we can't function in a way that helps us navigate the world. So some of the things that you want to look out for are your physical symptoms. So those could be sleeping problems, muscle aches, headaches, frequent colds. Reilly Chabie [00:07:02]: Our immune system is affected by our stress levels or increased heart rate. Emotionally, you might notice some anxiety, depression, loneliness, low self esteem. And then cognitively or kind of in our mind, we might experience memory concerns, worrying about things constantly, difficulties concentrating, and possibly poor judgment and impulse control. This one in particular will relate to our communication patterns in just a second. So just kind of keep that in mind as we move forward here. So with some of those stressors in mind, I think it's helpful to kind of consider how communication really plays into our experience and why it's important that we're experiencing these things. So communication is a fundamental component of relationship building. I mean, it's kind of the center of our universe, right? We have to communicate in order to navigate these things. Reilly Chabie [00:08:07]: Having effective communication or working on your communication will reduce your overall stress, which relates to our previous slide, talking through some of those stressful things. Having effective communication will absolutely help your groups, people that you're communicating with, or just general organizations work more cohesively and lead to better productivity, which absolutely plays a role in your life as a graduate student. If you're doing group projects, doing research, working in a lab, whatever it might be, it also helps to build your confidence and it helps you advocate and it ultimately helps you build trust with the people that you're working with or engaging with in a way that really makes life feel more fulfilling. You know, the more that you practice your communication skills and the more you work toward identifying the things that you need to communicate, the easier it is, no matter what setting you're in. And then lastly, it does reduce levels of conflict, and I'm talking about conflict in all of the different areas of your life, whether that's in romantic Relationships, friendships, co worker relationships, anything like that. It prevents misunderstandings due to lack of clarity or miscommunications in some way. So if we're effectively communicating, we're absolutely moving in the right direction. Keep these things in mind as we navigate the skills that we're going to talk about later, because those skills are what we practice so that we can gain these effective communication skills. Reilly Chabie [00:09:45]: Let's shift a little bit into communication barriers. Obviously, communication is not just a simple thing that we do every single day. In some ways it is. For example, I'm communicating with you right now, and this is relatively simple, but it's not always gonna look that way. And I think it's helpful to go through some of the barriers or things to kind of consider that might be affecting the way that we navigate these conversations. So I want you to take a moment and I'll briefly pause for you to think about this. I want you to think about what some of your barriers are to effective communication, because there's lots of them. There's no perfect list, but take a second and just kind of reflect on what barriers you foresee in your day to day. Reilly Chabie [00:10:40]: Now, as you think about those things, I'm going to list off a few and talk through some of my thought process around struggles with communication. One big area of communication barriers is our emotional dysregulation. So take a second and think of a time when you were feeling really overwhelmed. Maybe you were experiencing stress, maybe something was really confusing to you and you started to feel really irritated. And maybe you were asking yourself, why am I even bothered by this? What's going on in my life where I'm feeling this frustrated? Right? Those things are starting to come up in your mind. This might lead to heightened emotional states. Maybe we're feeling extra angry or extra sad, or really struggling to kind of navigate this area of our life. And that type of emotional dysregulation absolutely makes it difficult to be clear, concise, and communicate effectively. Reilly Chabie [00:11:42]: Sometimes we say things in the heat of the moment that we really don't mean, or we end up crying during a conversation and feel like we can't get a word out, or our anger is so hard that we prevent other people from adding to the conversation. All of these different things relate to emotions, dysregulation, and we want to kind of keep that in mind as we navigate these challenges. We're also going to want to consider our locations or spaces. There are definitely some places that are not conducive to a good conversation. For example, I'm not going to have a conversation about how my friend upset me the other day at a really loud concert. That doesn't really make any sense. So we're going to want to consider some of the best places to have these conversations and consider how that plays into the context of the conversation. Trust or distrust absolutely plays a role here. Reilly Chabie [00:12:41]: That if you trust somebody, you're probably going to be more likely to be vulnerable and talk about things that are bothering you or advocate for your needs. If you're not so trusting or you're struggling to see how a person can be trustworthy, we might be more restricted in terms of what we want to talk about, which might lead to miscommunication, it might lead to resentment. A lot of detriments happen when we don't trust the people that we're talking to. So keep that in mind too. That effective communication works really well with people we trust. So that means we need to build trust by practicing communication skills. It's kind of a reciprocal relationship. We also want to consider some power dynamics here. Reilly Chabie [00:13:27]: As a graduate student, you might be working with a boss or a professor or other people that maybe kind of are above you in terms of your hierarchy at your work or in school. And then you might also have your own employees or other people that you're maybe supervising, et cetera. We want to make sure that based on these power dynamics, we're effectively communicating without increasing that awareness of the power differential. That, yes, there's a reason that we have that power differential, but that can make things more or less uncomfortable. When trying to communicate something. It might be difficult to communicate to a professor about something, or it might be really easy to talk to a supervisee about something. So trying to navigate it based off of that, we also might want to consider cultural differences. Obviously, the way that I communicate is going to be much different than somebody in a different cultural background, maybe somebody who speaks a different language than I do. Reilly Chabie [00:14:31]: We really want to have that be part of our lens when we're communicating. We don't want to be disruptive or assume that people are going to communicate the same way with us, especially based on those cultural differences. So being mindful of that or noticing how it might affect the receiving end of that, that me saying something to somebody might be misinterpreted based on those cultures. Cultural differences. Imposter syndrome also plays a role in this. And what I mean by imposter syndrome is it relates to our confidence or our feelings about whether or not we can communicate that perhaps we feel like we're not able to speak up because we feel like we don't know what we're talking about. Or we assume people are kind of viewing us in a way where we don't belong. So we end up not communicating concerns and kind of leading to some of those stressful symptoms. Reilly Chabie [00:15:28]: So that absolutely can play a role. But the hope through this presentation is that we build some skills that can kind of change that aspect. Information overload is a big barrier to communication. Obviously, when we're taking in a lot of information, we have to process all of that. Like our brain has to work through that information and then that stimulus in order to figure out how to respond or figure out how that applies to our experience. So if there's a lot coming at us, for example, in a lecture or in another format, we might have a hard time synthesizing those thoughts and communicating in a way that's effective, that's clear. Or we just might be confused as to what we're talking about in the first place. So that can absolutely be a barrier. Reilly Chabie [00:16:14]: And we kind of have to navigate that by seeking clarification or moving through it differently. Misunderstandings or miscommunications are a big piece to communication barriers. That is, if somebody is regularly misunderstanding you or you feel like there's been a miscommunication, a lot of that relates to clarity and conciseness. Or sometimes people feel like they have to kind of navigate these conversations in a filtered way where they're only taking bits and pieces of what you're saying and kind of misconstruing it. So misunderstandings are very, very common, but they absolutely can contribute to the difficulties here. And then the last one that I want to touch base on are assumptions. We can't assume that people know what we're talking about, right? We have to communicate things clearly. And even then, there still might be some difficulties. Reilly Chabie [00:17:12]: So something that we want to consider here is that no matter how we're communicating or no matter what we think of other people or doing, doing something related to a conversation, we need to be prepared for any assumptions we might hold, and also the assumptions they might hold about us. And nobody can read your mind, right? So we don't want to assume that they're just going to get it right away or that without communicating that they're going to help you in the way that you need. So assumptions definitely play a role here. And once again, not an exhaustive list of barriers, but a really good overview of things that we might be experiencing. I also want to talk about a very unique type of communication barrier. So Gottman, both Julie and John, they're a married couple. They created a type of couples therapy that focuses on just communication. Right. Reilly Chabie [00:18:10]: And one thing that I really loved about what they provided in this training for other therapists is something called the Four Horsemen. Now, I'm not talking about the four Horsemen of the apocalypse. I know that's really common, but I'm actually talking about the Four Horsemen in terms of communication patterns. Gottman noted that there are four types. There's criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Now, their work relates mostly with couples, but this can apply in a variety of contexts. So based off of what you see on your screen here, criticism, as the name implies, is criticizing one's character. You know, telling them that they're selfish doing, criticizing the things that they're doing, which is much different than setting a complaint. Reilly Chabie [00:19:01]: There's contempt, which is that true level of disrespect where you're name calling with the ultimate goal of making a person feel worthless. There's defensiveness, which is a response to the criticism, where we feel wrongly accused so we might try to defend ourselves and only focus on that. And then there's stonewalling, which is a response to that very negative contempt where individuals will shut down, they will withdraw, they'll feel numb, and they just won't communicate at all. So these are also barriers to communication. And if we're experiencing any level of them, utilizing the skills we'll talk about later will kind of counteract that. But a big part of this is that it takes a lot of practice. Gottman notes that these barriers are kind of rooted in our previous experiences. So we kind of have to unlearn them and learn new things in order to navigate it. Reilly Chabie [00:20:01]: So I thought I would bring that in because I think it's kind of an interesting message mix to some of the other barriers. And I feel like these represent a good combination of what couples or friends or other relationships might be experiencing. So other versions of communication barriers. So we've talked about all of the things that ultimately can keep us from communicating effectively. We've also talked about maybe some of the stressful experiences that might coincide with limited conversations or limited communication experiences. I think it's really helpful to consider what types of communications are we actually looking at here when thinking of communication. I'm thinking of four particular types of. And we're going to focus mostly on the verbal and nonverbal. Reilly Chabie [00:21:04]: But these definitely apply to written and visual communication types as well. But verbal, obviously, is about spoken words, so that's what I'm communicating with you right now. We also have non verbal, which most people know as our body language, our facial expressions, and ultimately this nonverbal communication is what's supporting the verbal communication. So for example, all of my hand gestures perhaps are emphasizing the spoken words that I'm talking about here today. I'll also note another key part of nonverbal which relates to our communication skills are the concepts of our tone. So if we're, you know, having an attitude, for example, or talking maybe really angrily or really loud, that can kind of relate to how people receive our communication and it might also change the way we feel about that communication. So it's kind of a challenge there. Written communication includes emails, texts, social media posts and requires a bit of like that spelling and grammar consideration. Reilly Chabie [00:22:20]: So as a grad student, I bet you anything you're sending lots of emails or texting out to groups or maybe posting on social media. And it matters how we communicate and our verbal and nonverbal play into this as well, especially if we're posting videos and those types of things. We also have visual communication, which is through like images, graphs or symbols. So if you've ever seen a presentation where they have like bar graphs or things like that, that plays into our communication as well because it's a way for us to interpret information. So like I said, we're going to focus mostly on the verbal and the nonverbal piece here. But these do apply to especially written communication, even though we might not be able to have non verbals apply to our written communication. So getting into kind of the nitty gritty of communication here. So thinking about our verbal communication and honestly our nonverbal as well, we want to look at the four styles of communication which as I was doing research for this, I felt like this was kind of interesting as I think sometimes we will kind of fall in all of these categories in some way, or maybe we're very much focused in one area as opposed to another. Reilly Chabie [00:23:46]: It just kind of depends, right? So something that we want to kind of consider here are the passive aggressive, the combination which is the passive aggressive and the assertive communication styles. So starting with the left hand side with our passive communication styles, individuals who are passively communicating have a really hard time saying no. They're often apologetic, saying sorry for multiple things, kind of feeling more shy or inward. They struggle to speak up in a variety of contexts and are often agreeable even when something doesn't sit right with them. So they're very much kind of taking a backseat to conversations and navigating the world. And this is actually the type of communication where we are going to experience the most miscommunication errors. Simply because people who are passively communicating are often not sharing their feelings, they're not speaking up in these contexts. So we have to kind of consider that in this process here too. Reilly Chabie [00:24:53]: Interestingly enough, passive communication styles relate heavily to our nonverbal communication. So they might be more than likely communicating in a way that is non verbal, Whether that's through hand gestures, maybe it's through their posture, maybe you're seeing limited eye contact, things like that. That's the type of passive communication that we might see from somebody in this style. Shifting gears into the aggressive side of things, this one is a stark difference to the passive communicator. Aggressive communicators have zero concerns about communicating their issues, their feelings, their thoughts, and all of the struggles that they have. In fact, they are likely to be loud, they have angry tones in terms of their nonverbal communication. They might have some intense eye contact, and they just genuinely don't care about what's going on around them. They tend to interrupt people. Reilly Chabie [00:25:59]: They might have some intense eye contact, they might be insulting. Just very dominant in this area. This one can be challenging to navigate both from the communicator side of things, but also the person receiving. But a good thing to kind of keep in mind here is that when somebody is kind of being aggressive toward us in this communication style, we once again can use our communication style through calmness or through just kind of stability to kind of navigate that challenge. Shifting into the passive aggressive. This is a combination of the passive and the aggressive. As the name implies, what's distinct about this is that individuals in this category are passive outwardly, meaning they're going to be very agreeable. They're gonna kind of seem content on the outside. Reilly Chabie [00:27:01]: They're not necessarily going to be fully communicating, but they might add bits and pieces there. So kind of level outwardly, but they have aggressive motivations when it comes to their actions, right? So, for example, somebody might outwardly be very agreeable, say, yep, that sounds like a good idea, but their actions say otherwise. When they start to maybe do things inappropriately per what was agreed upon, they often can be seen as manipulating the situations based off of this passive aggressive technique. And we kind of struggle with this one because this is the communication style that often uses sarcasm or the silent treatment, which can kind of elicit some really uncomfortable feelings for the person that's trying to communicate with them. So once again, A decent combination between the two, but we're going to notice some of those differences, especially in terms of their actions. And then lastly, the most ideal approach for communication is the assertive approach. So this creates a balance between being able to kind of express your thoughts in a take charge type of way, while also creating a very safe and non judgmental, balanced space for other people to add their thoughts and to feel like they are comfortable enough to do so. People with an assertive communication style often know what their limits are in terms of what they can take on. Reilly Chabie [00:28:38]: They're always willing to kind of challenge themselves and navigate the world differently, but they absolutely will tell you no if they can't do something. However, they do this in a very respectful way. They understand that communication plays a large role in how a team navigates a problem or how relationships are developed. So they're really focused on creating a collaborative a space so that all people can be involved in the process. Once again, this is the ideal and sometimes we're going to practice really well in this area. Other times we might fall into some of the other categories. It just really depends on the situation and where we're at. So I think it's helpful to kind of take the communication styles here and see how you fit into that. Reilly Chabie [00:29:26]: Do you notice yourself shifting between these areas or do you kind of find yourself within one? And if you're kind of outside the assertive zone, maybe thinking about ways that you can shift your communication approach so that you might relate more to the assertive style as opposed to the others. So just brief overview of the communication styles. So kind of keep that in mind as we look at our skills here. All right, so we have talked a lot about certain communication styles. We've talked about barriers, We've talked about the symptoms that we might experience or the struggles that might happen if we're not not communicating effectively. And I think it's helpful now to shift gears into how does that translate into our actual actions related to communication? Because once again, communication is more than just talking. It's about creating this space and this dynamic where a collaborative approach can kind of help navigate the issues at hand. So first and foremost, we're going to go ahead and start with identifying our needs. Reilly Chabie [00:30:32]: If we go back to the previous slides about the eight dimensions of wellness, or perhaps talking a little bit about some of those barriers, those might be indicators as to the types of things that we need. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:30:47]: Right. Reilly Chabie [00:30:48]: So maybe a few examples of what we need might include asking for help on something, a common thing that I've Utilized, especially when I was a graduate student, was asking for extensions or extra support on an assignment. So that might be a need of yours. We might also think about a need for maybe support in terms of childcare. We might have needs. Regarding how we navigate a work stressor, lots of different needs kind of come up. And if you think about the eight dimensions of wellness and you notice that, like, let's say, for example, our financial stress is increasing, we might notice that we have needs within that area, such as financial counseling or figuring out how to make a budget that we're going to need to communicate and kind of effectively navigate. Once we've identified like a need, we might also look at explaining an issue that we're having as part of our needs, because it's not just simply asking for something, but it might be you're struggling to understand material, right? So you explain what you're struggling with, and that can be a need. Maybe you're explaining an issue between yourself and your partner, whether that's like a group partner or your spouse or somebody in your life. Reilly Chabie [00:32:18]: Explaining an issue is just the same as identifying a need for help simply because you're able to open up about your emotional experiences. And that's an important part of building relationships, which, if we remember, is a positive thing to come from effective communication. We also might identify a need like addressing a limit. So when I'm talking about limits, I'm talking about if we've reached this kind of peak level of functioning in a particular area, that's a limit, right? So, for example, a limit that I hold might be that I do not play on my phone before I go to bed, up to like one hour before then, right? That's a limit for me that if I'm playing on my phone right before I go to sleep, I'm absolutely not going to be able to go to sleep as fast as I would like to. So addressing a limit is also a need. Now, when communicating to somebody about that, you are essentially using something called boundaries, which I will talk about in a little bit. But boundaries are our way of communicating those limits and kind of creating consequences on what happens if somebody exceeds that limit or pushes you past that limit. All right, so you've identified that need, right? You've identified the thing that you want to communicate. Reilly Chabie [00:33:41]: A big tip here, once you've identified that thing, and I didn't necessarily put it in the slide, but it's very important, is that you plan ahead prior to this conversation. We don't want to jump into a conversation if even Though we've identified a need, we don't actually know what we're looking for. Right. So, for example, if I need help on an assignment that's pretty vague, what specifically do I need help on? What question on the worksheet, what criteria of the rubric, what style do I need to submit my references for? What does that look like? What is the specifics of that need and plan, how you want to communicate that, how you want to say that? Obviously, if we kind of have a bullet point list of maybe some of the points that we want to make, examples of why you have that need, that might be helpful for the person you communicating to, to better understand and get some context around why you're having that conversation in the first place. So planning ahead really helps here. Obviously, I know that that might not always happen, but it is helpful in this context if we can do that. We're also going to want to think about creating the right space to have these conversations. Like I said earlier, we want to make sure we have limited distractions. Reilly Chabie [00:35:06]: Having a really emotionally vulnerable conversation with somebody is not going to fare well at a concert or if I'm in class listening to a lecture. Those things have distractions. They're not appropriate for certain things. Which. Speaking of, think of the context of the conversation. Am I going to have a conversation about how I'm concerned that. That my friend is maybe talking to another friend inappropriately in front of, you know, the audience here? Right. Like, would I talk to you about that? Probably not. Reilly Chabie [00:35:53]: Even though it's an important conversation that needs to be had, I'm not going to be talking about it in the midst of my presentation here. So think of the context of the conversation and identify a space that works there. Part of creating that space as well is identifying who your audience is. Who are you talking to? It's going to be much different to be talking to a friend as compared to what it's like talking to a professor. There might be certain words or lingo or kind of funny things that you might add to a conversation with your friend that would not be appropriate for how you're communicating with your professor. I'm not necessarily going to tell a joke to my professor unless the context called for it. So we want to keep that in mind as we navigate creating that space. So once you've identified that need, maybe you planned ahead and then you've created that space where you figured out where and when and who you're talking to. Reilly Chabie [00:36:54]: We want to communicate it. Right? So first and foremost, we are going to Build our confidence in communicating when we're coming from a place of confidence, right? That because I planned ahead, I'm ready to talk about my feelings, specifically, my experiences specifically. Which relates to the second bullet point here, which is using I statements. So I bet that I statements kind of feels a little nostalgic in a way that I remember kind of learning this in kindergarten. Like the I feel or I think or I have noticed this is really crucial to communicating your needs because we don't want to place blame on people. We don't want to indirectly accuse somebody of doing something when we don't have the full understanding of what's going on in the front first place. Right? So utilizing I statements and building confidence around practicing, like, I feel angry when this thing happens, or I have noticed that this thing has happened before and this is how it's made me feel. Right? The more we practice that and the more we kind of come in tune with our own feelings and thoughts, the more confidence we have. Reilly Chabie [00:38:18]: And we're not talking about the actions of the other person. We're only focusing on our experience, which is really the only thing we have control over in that moment. We also want to keep an eye out when we're communicating these things using I statements. We want to keep an eye out for our nonverbal communication, right. That some things we want to keep in mind are, do we have good eye contact? Right. We're not directly staring into their soul, but we're also not averting our gaze when trying to talk about something important. Right. We want to have a little bit of that confidence, good posture, right. Reilly Chabie [00:38:54]: With our shoulders square, a little bit back, as straight as it can be. We don't want to necessarily be hunched over or in other predicaments there. We also might want to limit crossing our arms or kind of creating an inadvertent barrier. Right? Because sometimes that can give off a sense of discomfort or you're blocking the conversation, those types of things. That. That might be kind of a comfort thing for some people, but if we avoid that, we're kind of moving toward showing with our body language that we're open to communication and ready to have what is called a conversation, as opposed to just. Just, I'm giving you this information and that's it. We also absolutely want to check our tone, right. Reilly Chabie [00:39:45]: That we're not necessarily coming from an angry space or we don't want to be too quiet or too timid in that process. We want that tone to be stable and precise. We also definitely want to keep an eye out on our emotional levels. Right? So let's say you start a conversation keeping all of these things in mind. You're talking about your I feels, your I thinks, explaining the situation. But as the conversation is going on, you're getting too heated, right? You're maybe getting more frustrated. You're maybe not necessarily thinking about what the other person is saying, but more so thinking about what you're going to say next in response or how are you going to defend yourself. That's a great indicator that you might need to take a step back, acknowledge that that conversation is not going to go as well as we would like it to. Reilly Chabie [00:40:37]: It might not be as effective because our thinking and our thought patterns are going to be affected by that. We're not going to think as clearly. So it is okay to note like, whoa, I'm feeling a little overheated here. I'm actually going to take a five minute break. Let's come back to this conversation in a second. That may sound weird, but that's actually really effective in helping people not only process information, but also to reduce a lot of that emotional dysregulation which we talked about earlier when considering emotional barriers or, excuse me, communication barriers. And then the last piece that I want to consider here is, yes, communication and the way that you are saying something through your verbal and nonverbal communication is very crucial to communicating your needs. But the other part of this that is just as important is your active listening skills, right? It's not like you're just talking to a wall and you're expressing something to that wall and then it's left there, right? People that you're talking to are going to respond, they're going to have feelings, they're going to be practicing these skills just like you are. Reilly Chabie [00:41:45]: Right? So we want to engage in our active listening skills. And what I mean by active listening is we need to pause and really take in the information that they're giving us. That if they say I feel sad or I feel embarrassed or some variation of that, we absolutely want to take that in and use that as an opportunity to reflect for them. Right? So if I say to you I feel angry when you don't let me know that you're coming home late from work. So if I express that to you, that's your opportunity to reflect back, saying, oh, when I don't communicate to you that I'm coming home late, that makes you angry and maybe makes you feel worried about me. Right. That's kind of a summary or a reflection of what I just said that tells me that you're listening and that you've actually noticed the specifics of what I've told you. Right? And it gives you both a chance to really process and kind of get that critical thinking and problem solving part of your brain running. Reilly Chabie [00:42:51]: So just as much as communicating your needs is important, listening to the experiences of others really makes for that reciprocal and mutual conversation to go the way that you want it to. So we have a couple more slides left, and with some of those communication skills in mind, things that you want to consider. I wanted to circle back to the boundaries piece, which is a specific type of communication that can be used in any setting, even outside of being a grad student. I actually used this image in one of my previous presentations because I think it's helpful to note that boundaries are very similar to those eight dimensions of wellness where we're identifying boundaries. Within these different areas, you might have some emotional boundaries, maybe some conversational boundaries, like perhaps you don't want to talk about certain topics or with a particular person, you're not willing or are willing to communicate certain feelings, maybe some physical boundaries, etc. These are just as important to maintaining our confidence with needs, right? Because there are going to be instances where we've met those limits and this is what we need to communicate. Maybe we didn't have these effective conversations previously before we've met that limit, but now's the time to do so. And practicing this skill helps us kind of build confidence in what we're feeling, and it also helps us kind of establish our own identity and how we want to navigate our world. Reilly Chabie [00:44:27]: Right? Because these boundaries are based off of your values, the things that you care about, and communicating them lets people know what you do care about and the things that you want to do in order to maintain that connection. So as we wrap up here, I just want to offer a couple of things that might be helpful in your journey with communication in winter 2026. So starting sometime in January, I will be hosting again our Healing Heart Circle, which is a relationship support group where we do talk about more in depth. Some of these considerations I also have here our CAPS Instagram page. This is really helpful just for general material on mental health, and feel free to let us know if there's some communication things you want to see through reels or other postings. So feel free to check that out. And with that, that's all that I have for you today on communicating your needs with confidence. Feel free to scan this QR code to let me know how I did, or if there was any material that maybe you wanted me to discuss. Reilly Chabie [00:45:29]: And I can have that for next time. Thank you so much, everybody. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:45:32]: Thanks, Riley. Really appreciate you sharing all of this today. We have recorded it so we will make sure that it goes live and is shared with everyone because we want everyone to have an opportunity to be able to learn and grow and work on those communication skills, to be able to, as I said at the beginning, better advocate for themselves. But this has been amazing. Riley, thank you so much for sharing this today, for being here, and for sharing all this amazing, all these amazing resources. And I look forward to having you back again very soon. Reilly Chabie [00:46:09]: All right, thank you so much, Dr. Lewis. Bye everybody. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:46:12]: The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduate programs to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad officemflint. Eduardo.
Juggling Responsibilities: Key Tips for Graduate Student Success
Graduate school is a journey often described as a juggling act, and for good reason. In the recent episode "Juggling & Balancing – How to Multitask and Stabilize in Grad School" of the Victors in Grad School podcast, Dr. Christopher Lewis and Matthew Oxie delve into what it really takes to find success amidst the constant pull of academic, personal, and professional responsibilities. Understanding Grad School Stress Dr. Lewis opens the conversation by normalizing the stress that comes with graduate school. As he puts it, "There is a lot that you are going to be tossing in the air… Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. And that's okay as long as you learn along the way." This sets a compassionate tone for exploring the sources of grad school stress—ranging from academic pressure and family obligations to financial concerns and planning for life after graduation. Matthew Oxie, a licensed counselor with CAPS at UM-Flint, provides further insight, citing research that graduate students are two to six times more likely to experience anxiety and depression than their undergraduate peers. Stressors like career planning, clinical rotations, commuting, and social obligations all play a role, often overlapping and compounding each other. The Eight Dimensions of Wellness A major highlight from the episode is the discussion of the Eight Dimensions of Wellness, which include physical, emotional, environmental, financial, occupational, social, intellectual, and spiritual health. Matthew encourages listeners to use these as both a diagnostic tool and a growth map—reminding us that thriving in one area can help offset struggles in another. Self-Care vs. Self-Soothing: What's the Difference? Perhaps the most impactful segment is Matthew's exploration of self-care versus self-soothing. He stresses that while activities like watching Netflix or having a treat are important for unwinding, true self-care is intentional and structured—it's about setting boundaries, routines, and practicing deliberate actions that nourish long-term wellbeing. Strategies That Work The episode wraps up with practical advice: prioritize tasks, intentionally schedule downtime, set boundaries (like keeping work email off your phone), and leverage campus resources such as the rec center or counseling services. Matthew and Dr. Lewis also encourage graduate students—no matter if they're on-campus or online—to "get involved" in community and social activities. If you're feeling the weight of multiple responsibilities or struggling with balance in grad school, this episode is a must-listen. You'll come away with not just empathy for your situation, but tangible strategies for thriving—one step, and one intentional action, at a time. Ready to find your balance and become a victor in graduate school? Listen to the full episode for more insights and encouragement! TRANSCRIPT Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]: Welcome to Victors in Grad School where we have conversations with students, alumni and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]: Thanks so much for being here today. I am Dr. Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs here at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you here today. And as always, you know, I am excited that we're going to be talking about a really important topic because as you go through graduate school, you definitely are going to be doing a lot of juggling. There is a lot of things that you are going to be tossing in the air and you're going to be trying to keep going. And balancing all of that as you're going through graduate school is something that all of us that have gone through graduate school before have had to work through. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we fail. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:53]: And that's okay as long as you learn along the way. And today we've got Matthew Oxy with us. And Matthew is one of our counselors in our CAPS office. And I love our partnership with CAPS because we always talk about amazing topics that will help all of us to be able to learn something a little bit new. So I'm going to turn it over to him to walk us through and talk to us about this important topic. Thanks Matt. Matthew Oxie [00:01:19]: Excellent. Yeah, no problem. Thank you for having me again, Dr. Lewis. Matthew Oxie [00:01:22]: Hello. Matthew Oxie [00:01:22]: Like Dr. Lewis said, my name is Matthew Oxie. I'm a licensed professional counselor with the Counseling and Psychological Services, the CAPS department here at U of M Flint. I do. Like I said, how does that make you feel? Therapy oftentimes Today we are going to talk about how to multitask and stabilize while in graduate school through effective self care strategies, time management tactics and ways you can get involved both on campus and within your own communities to help promote your own well being. So a couple disclaimers beforehand. This is not going to be direct therapeutic advice. I advise if this is something you're seeking, you can either find services at caps, which we'll talk about here soon, or services within a community, or you're already connected. Matthew Oxie [00:02:09]: But just as a little word of advice. This is not like formal therapeutic advice. The next thing this lecture may not be a full hour. I am, I like public speaking. I'm very good at it. But I'm also kind of a fast talker. So if you guys have any questions, feel free to shout them out in the chat and I will get to them. Dr. Matthew Oxie [00:02:26]: Lewis, you as well, if you have anything, please let me know. But I guess before we really get started, I want to start with something kind of controversial guys might not be aware of this. Matthew Oxie [00:02:38]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:02:39]: Grad school can be stressful. Shocking, I know, but it's important to recognize this before we get too deep into the nitty gritty of what we want to talk about with multitasking here. So the types of stressors graduate students face. I've got my speaker notes down here, so it looks like I'm not looking at the screen. I've got my speaker notes down here. I'm not checking my phone or anything like that. So correct me if I'm wrong, Dr. Lewis, but University of Michigan Flint currently offers over 30 graduate programs. Matthew Oxie [00:03:10]: Actually, I was going to say over 50. Over 50. Matthew Oxie [00:03:13]: Wow. Matthew Oxie [00:03:14]: I was looking at the. The course selector. Not the course selector like the major selection thing, like the academic programs. I only counted about 35. So you got over 50, we've got over 50. So that furthers the point that across the University of Michigan Flint campus, graduate students are a significant portion of our university's makeup. Right. So this is something that's important to talk about. Matthew Oxie [00:03:38]: Obviously, if you're listening to this, you're likely a graduate student at U of M Flint. So you understand that now common sources of graduate student stress. Graduate student student stress. Someday I'll be able to get that combination of words out of my mouth. Now, there is actually an index for this. There is the Graduate Stress Inventory. It was made in the mid-90s and it's been revised over the decades. And it asks a series of questions related to environmental, academic, and then family and monetary stressors as well. Matthew Oxie [00:04:10]: And you can see those are listed here. Academic stress, family issues, interpersonal relationships and financial stress. Additionally, though a little bit more specific to graduate school or I guess in addition to the gsi, we have career, right? Career placement, career planning. What are we going to do after graduate school as well as research and teaching. I know it is a very important part of some programs that you write a thesis, for example, or you have teaching experience or you're expected to teach or run a class or a lab. Matthew Oxie [00:04:47]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:04:47]: Just depends on what you're studying. There are other problems that are more broad that can amplify some of these stressors, Other concerns that might be totally unrelated to graduate school, but can make it harder to get through poor physical health or disabilities. If we talk about something like a physical disability, chronic pain, and even sometimes increased fatigue, all of these things can, as we've said, amplify the stress of what is above mental and emotional struggles. Matthew Oxie [00:05:22]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:05:23]: Preexisting mental health struggles or mental health diagnoses. Or mental health struggles and diagnoses that crop up as a result of graduate school. We'll talk about that here on the next slide. So I don't want to get too, too much into the mental and emotional stuff right this second. Sleep can amplify issues. How many of us don't get enough sleep in graduate school? I'm sure quite a few of us. Matthew Oxie [00:05:47]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:05:47]: That constant, seemingly chronic exhaustion can lead to again, further feelings of stress and then finally age. This one, while Empirical is also a little more anecdotal. Age can play a role in increasing the potency of some of these stressors. Matthew Oxie [00:06:06]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:06:06]: I want you to think about it. Older students are more likely to be a little bit more established. What I mean by that is you probably already have a family, you already have a career you might be juggling, and you might have yourself embedded in other parts of your communities, for example, on top of graduate school. Whereas someone coming right out of undergrad may not have those exact same stressors right now. Moving on to our next slide here we've got the what now? Let's talk about the how how stress affects graduate student. So before we really get into this, there is a plethora of research on graduate student stress. However, given that's not the topic of the presentation, I'm just going to give you some of the highlights and I promise the rest of the presentation is just a little bit more uplifting than this right here. So graduate students report higher rates of stress than undergraduate students. Matthew Oxie [00:07:10]: The 2013 study by Wyatt and Oswald showed that while undergraduate students show significantly higher rates of mental illness, graduate students report higher rates of stress. This stress comes from many of the aforementioned stressors that we just talked about, right? There are a lot of expectations put on graduate students. Graduate students are six times more likely to experience anxiety and depression. And those who experience anxiety and depression also report a poor work life balance. Now, I know that sounds contradictory to the last point. This study done in 2018 found that graduate students are two to six times more likely to experience anxiety and depression during grad school, right? This can lead to that increased anxiety or decreased work life balance. My words are all over the place today. I do sincerely apologize. Matthew Oxie [00:08:07]: So despite grad or undergraduate students reporting higher rates of mental health struggles, graduate students are still more likely to experience those mental health struggles as well throughout their time. And finally, many multicultural elements play a role in some of the stress as well. Everything is multicultural. When we look at some of these elements, we find that graduate students who face particularly racial discrimination and Financial distress have higher rates of anxiety and depression during graduate school. These findings persist with racial discrimination and financial stress. These findings persistent even when students have strong familial and social support. So if faced with racial injustice or heavy financial pressure, regardless of a social or familial support network, you'll still see some of these issues crop up. Additionally, students who reported as LGBTQ had higher odds of anxiety and depression on an individual level. Matthew Oxie [00:09:20]: And students who reported financial distress were way more prone, particularly to anxiety. In this study done in 2021, financial stress was a large indicator of anxiety. So we've done the fun part. I think I have another bullet point there. Women and international students tend to show heightened distress in graduate school as well. We've done the super fun part. We have established that graduate school is stressful. We know what stresses students out. Matthew Oxie [00:09:53]: We know how that, how that stress affects you guys on both the macro and the micro level. However, like I said, identifying stress is not the goal of this lecture. It's the foundation for what we kind of want to talk about here, right? The goal is to learn and discuss ways to balance graduate school with everything else. Now, graduate students have kind of a full plate. Again, I'm just full of shocking statements for you guys today. You guys probably did not know that before I said that as graduate students, I have a lot on your plates. What we have examples here on this slide, right? Some examples of things that are or make you make us busy as graduate students. Coursework and exams. Matthew Oxie [00:10:44]: I know some graduate programs have exams multiple times a week for multiple weeks in a row. Some graduate programs here on campus even condense. And their hell weeks, for example, are even more jam packed with exams because instead of the full 16 weeks, it drops to like a 10 week, 12 week program, right? There's teaching and there's researching, as we mentioned. Sometimes there is an expectation that you run your own class or there's an expectation that you're doing research for your thesis, for your final report. Clinical rotations behind me, you can't see it particularly well through the windows, but I'm across the river from the white building and most of the programs in there, pa, pt, nursing, all require some degree of clinical rotations, some of which are not particularly close to home. Full or part time jobs, whether you have a 20 hour a week, you know, kind of like flash money job that you do working at a coffee shop, or if you're like my colleague Riley, who is currently enrolled in our social work program here at U of M Flint and is also Working as a CAPS counselor, full time work can be stressful. Your occupation can add a lot of things for you to do. We talk about expectations. Matthew Oxie [00:12:00]: It's a. It's a whole nother slew of things. Family obligations. This can look a million different ways. This can look like raising children, supporting a partner, supporting your parents if they're older, or navigating life with a chosen family, for example. Family obligations are persistent. Commutes. I feel like this one isn't really talked about as much. Matthew Oxie [00:12:23]: Some students, I mean, U of M Flint is a commuter school. I know we have on campus residencies and we offer quite a few remote programs and remote classes. But at its core, U of M Flint has always been a commuter school. And sometimes those commutes really can add up. Like I said, whether you're going to class or going to a clinical rotation, that's an hour away. If you live here on campus and your clinical rotation is in Ann Arbor, down at Michigan Medicine, that's a two hour round trip commute you have to take every day, potentially longer. And while the commute itself might not be particularly difficult, US23 is not a very hard drive. It does take away a lot of time. Matthew Oxie [00:13:05]: And it makes some of these other things like researching and managing your family and managing your coursework more difficult because that time you have to do it is now even less because you have to spend two hours on the road, for example. And then finally clubs, professional organizations, or governing bodies within your cohort. Matthew Oxie [00:13:24]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:13:24]: I know some programs have like a class president, for example. And then you may be. I believe when I was in graduate school, I was in, I think it was called Chi Sigma iota. It was the professional fraternity for counselors. I believe so. And I was on the board of that. I believe I was the secretary treasurer. It was one of the things. Matthew Oxie [00:13:45]: It was a long time ago. I apologize for not fully remembering. But all of these things are examples of what the average graduate student might be faced with. What do we notice about the examples that were laid out? They look nearly identical to the things that caused us that kind of stress. I know, that's kind of obvious, right? When we talk about things being on our plate, they often correlate to being stressful. Matthew Oxie [00:14:15]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:14:18]: Graduate students are faced with many, if not all of these challenges at the exact same time throughout their programs. I have talked a little bit now about the kind of obvious stressful balancing act that is graduate school. So let's get into the actual meat and potatoes of the lecture. Let's discuss ways to Juggle all of these things, balance all these things, prioritize and manage everything we have here and potentially more while keeping our heads above water. The eight dimensions of Wellness. If you have been a student at U of M Flint for any period of time, I am sure you are familiar with this image. The eight dimensions of wellness are something that university health and well being. University health and wellness uhs, they are. Matthew Oxie [00:15:13]: They're very big on the eight dimensions of wellness and for good reason. Honestly, these dimensions, they can help us from a practical sense, the eight dimensions of wellness can help us categorize some of our concerns and help us recognize where we can grow and also really where we're thriving. They don't just have to be about, oh, what am I lacking? We can look at these eight dimensions and go, okay, I'm secure in these areas. And that can help again further that wellness and foundation. I very briefly want to discuss each of them because I know sometimes these are not discussed, they're just sort of slapped right on the page and you're just expected to be like, oh yeah, it's intuitive, it makes sense and in a lot of ways it is. So this is information from both, I believe, University of Michigan and for the life of me, I can't remember the other website, but you'll see it in the references. What other university I got this information from. So just going to go, start at the top, going to go clockwise here. Matthew Oxie [00:16:13]: Physical. It's the ability to maintain quality of life that helps you get through the activities of the day with ease. Emotional awareness. These are an awareness of, of thoughts and feelings and responses to daily interactions and events. Environmental wellness is our respect for ourselves, our respect for our community, and a respect for our environment and its surroundings. Right? This can be a love of nature, a love of keeping our cities clean, for example, like really caring about the quality of our environments that we are in all the time. Financial wellness, knowing how to manage expenses and your relationship with money. This can get difficult in graduate school. Matthew Oxie [00:17:00]: Sometimes we have to work a lot. Sometimes graduate school, not even sometimes. A lot of times graduate school is very expensive. And trying to manage living life as a regular adult, quote unquote, and having to pay for graduate school can be very stressful. Occupational wellness, the work you do and how it fulfills you. Matthew Oxie [00:17:25]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:17:27]: If you're in this point in your academic career, I would hope you're doing something that you love. I love therapy. I went to Graduate school of Central Michigan, Master's degree in clinical mental health counseling. I love it. I would do Therapy for free. I would do it a lot less often, but I would do it for free. I love this job. I think I will do it for the next several decades. Matthew Oxie [00:17:49]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:17:50]: When we think about occupational wellness, we think about the meaning and the fulfillment we get from what we choose to do with our careers. Social wellness. This is defining and connecting with individuals, groups and communities as a whole. Social wellness. I mean humans are social creatures. Enough said. Matthew Oxie [00:18:10]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:18:11]: Intellectual wellness. This is feeling stimulated and engaged with learning opportunities both within and outside of school. There are many ways that we can still learn in a non academic sense. Intellectual wellness kind of pushes us to further that. And finally, spiritual wellness. Spiritual wellness is your understanding of place and purpose and how you make meaning of who you are and what happens to you. Spiritual wellness can be understood in many, many different ways. Again, it changes person to person. Matthew Oxie [00:18:43]: But now we have our def. Our eight definitions of the eight dimensions of wellness. And I want you to keep these in mind throughout the rest of this presentation and think about ways you can apply what you already do as well as what we will talk about here in a bit to these dimensions. Matthew Oxie [00:19:01]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:19:01]: This isn't necessarily a strict homework assignment, just more of a thought experiment. Self care versus Self soothing. Part of me wants to apologize in advance. This is my soapbox. This is the thing I love talking about. But part of me also doesn't want to because I think it's great information that you guys all can have and share around as you please. So Self care versus Self soothing. Self care. Matthew Oxie [00:19:31]: This is, like I said, one of my favorite topics. This will serve as the foundation going forward for the rest of our time together. Matthew Oxie [00:19:39]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:19:39]: I've got a few more slides after this, but this warrants enough that we want to talk about this quite a bit, right? I want to take some time to lay it out for you. You have probably heard of the importance of self care, right? Everyone's heard of the importance of self care. Whether it is a paper, an article, a journal, a review about the importance of self care and well being, or self care and stress reduction. Whether it's scholarly and academic, or if it's a 20 second TikTok video raving about the importance of taking time for you, regardless of where you've heard it from, they are correct. Self care is a crucial part of balancing responsibilities in graduate school and beyond. Because if you are a graduate student mid-20s, you still got like 70 years left after graduate school is over. So we manage self care now. This can carry us for a very long time. Matthew Oxie [00:20:42]: Here's where I get on my soapbox though. However, our definition of self care might be a little off. Now, our knee jerk reaction when we think of self care is what? Matthew Oxie [00:20:53]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:20:55]: Watching Netflix, maybe taking a nice bath, Finding a little sweet treat like self care, right? I'm doing this for me. This is self care. These are all fantastic ways to unwind. They're not self care, right? These activities can be better defined as self soothing. Now if you look at the column on the left under self soothing, they can be defined as activities that help soothe a person during a stressful time. These are, I'm sure if you guys, you know, wanted to, you could think of half a dozen ways that you guys self soothe on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, right? This is something that helps you regulate yourself. This helps regulate our stress levels. One of the keys with self soothing is they're easily accessible and sometimes well established. Matthew Oxie [00:21:48]: You don't really have to do anything new or difficult to load up Netflix or to load up a video game or to go on a walk, right? A lot of these self soothing activities don't take a whole lot of effort. And even if you want to try something new, right? These self soothing activities, for example, it makes it sound so formal. These ways that we relax and unwind self so soothing, right? They can be learned and practiced even in busy times. You know, there's something like, like cooking, for example, can be, there can be soothing for some people. Working on new recipes, reading new books, playing new games, watching new shows, right? These can be examples of how easy self soothing can be. And that's part of the beauty of it. It doesn't take a very big barrier to entry. However, self soothing, if overused, can be deleterious to our health and well being in graduate school and beyond. Matthew Oxie [00:22:50]: So self soothing, while absolutely necessary to our overall well being, like I said, can have some negative effects. I want you to think about a scenario for me. You are very stressed and you say, you know what? I've had a long day. I'm going to watch Netflix for 48 straight hours, right? I'm doing it in the name of self care for, for self care sake. I'm going to watch Netflix for 48 straight hours. What do we think happens? What do you think happens when we watch Netflix for 48 straight hours? For starters, you probably haven't eaten much, probably haven't showered at all. You probably haven't slept very much. You probably haven't gone to the bathroom very much. Matthew Oxie [00:23:35]: So on the most basic physiological level, probably not doing great, your eyes probably hurt. Probably feeling a little atrophied from sitting on the couch or the bed all day long. What's more than that, right? On top of that, you've probably missed a class or two, you've possibly missed work, and you've likely neglected other social and familial responsibilities in the name of self care, right? Your pets didn't get fed, your kids didn't get picked up from school. Your professor was never informed about why you didn't go to a lecture. Your manager never found out why you didn't go to work. So now you have a no call, no show, right? I will admit that the example of watching Netflix for 48 straight hours is just a little bit hyperbolic. I get it, right? However, I bring it up because it does a good job of showcasing what Mistaking self soothing how mistaking self soothing for self care can be harmful, right? Is doing something like watching Netflix inherently harmful? No, of course not. There are great shows on Netflix and Hulu, or if you're a sports fan, like so NFL Sunday Ticket, for example, or March Madness Basketball. Matthew Oxie [00:24:59]: These are all totally fine ways to soothe, but it it highlights that if overused, they can hurt us, right? All of that said, what is self care? I like to think of self care as the framework for proper self soothing. Matthew Oxie [00:25:16]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:25:17]: One of the key differences between self care and self soothing, the way I like to define it, is that self care is intentional. What do I mean by that? I say intentional because true self care is thought out and implemented with a goal in mind, right? So we look on the other column here of this, of this presentation. Self care is comprised of intentional practices, routines and structures which are developed over time to better facilitate well being in however way we feel it necessary. Self care involves establishing boundaries with yourself and others to create a healthy environment for you to work in. I will use an example of this from my own personal and professional life. I don't have my email on my phone. Don't have my work email on my phone. I know many people, colleagues, even my partner, are stressed out of the fact that I don't have my email on my phone. Matthew Oxie [00:26:20]: But it's a boundary I have set over the years because despite working a job that at any given moment duty could call and we would have to see to a crisis. Nothing so serious is going to come up that I'm not going to get a phone call or a text message. And honestly, when 5 o' clock comes around, I don't want to think about work afterwards. I care about my clients, but I don't want to have that stress following me. An example of a boundary to keep that is to keep email off of my phone, my work email off of my phone, right? These can be far more difficult to implement on the fly. If you guys have something for example, like your work email or your school email on your phone and I told you to delete it, would that work? Would that make you feel comfortable? Probably not, right? Not if you've been used to using it for a couple of months or even a couple of years, depending on what program you're in. Intentional self care takes deliberate practice. Intentional self care can be started small and it takes practice. Matthew Oxie [00:27:31]: We'll talk about it here very soon, but I'm going to give you an example of what intentional self care can look like. I've written out a little scenario here, so follow me as best you can. Let's say you've had a stressful week of exams, work and research. You had two exams on Wednesday. You had one exams on third, one exam on Thursday. You had three eight hour work days throughout the week, and the first draft of your thesis was due by Friday morning. The weekend comes around and for the first time all semester long you don't have anything going on. There are no exams on Monday, there are no readings to do and there are no articles to examine. Matthew Oxie [00:28:15]: There's no shifts to clock in for. There's nothing. You truly have nothing to do in the following week. And you decide, you know what? I think I'm gonna watch Netflix all weekend long. Just like our friend who watched it for 48 straight hours. I'm gonna watch Netflix all weekend long. An example of the intentional approach with self care in this case involves setting boundaries and establishing some of some time management, right? You've already done the hard work of clearing your schedule. You've already done the hard work. Matthew Oxie [00:28:49]: You've done the exams, you've done the paper, you've done the work. Like the actual physical going into work, you've done the hard part. And you've said in advance, my plan for the weekend is to do nothing. You have laid that out even as early as Monday, maybe even the weekend prior this upcoming weekend. I'm not doing a darn thing. I'm going to watch Netflix all weekend long. So there are no major external expectations, expectations at this point that exist for us to neglect, right? We've already established it with ourselves. We've set that boundary. Matthew Oxie [00:29:24]: Now your plan with this whole weekend, you're gonna wake up, take a shower on Saturday morning, have a coffee, have a yogurt, feed your cats, and then prepare to get comfy on the couch or the bed for the next like several hours. Matthew Oxie [00:29:38]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:29:39]: Maybe you're a Lord of the Rings person. You want to watch all the extended editions of Lord of the Rings. That's a very long time commitment. That's a whole weekend's worth of content right there. But you, you're, you're settled in, you're dug in. You allow yourself to pause when needed, pause your movie, pause your show, pause your game to use the bathroom, find a little bit of lunch, prep some dinner, care for your animals as needed. Matthew Oxie [00:30:04]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:30:05]: And I'll, I'll add another example. We talked about cooking as a self soothing method. You make something simple and healthy on Saturday. You make something simple and healthy, it doesn't take a whole lot of effort filling you like it. And you're doing that because you told yourself you're going to order food on Sunday. You know, thinking about the financial dimension of wellness, you want to order from doordash, but doordash can be expensive. Yeah, we'll do it one day. You know, we'll plan, we'll plan our finances around it, we'll plan our meal around it, and that'll be our game plan. Matthew Oxie [00:30:36]: We'll eat a little dinner on Saturday and then order something on Sunday. On Sunday evening, take a little bit of time after dinner to prep for the week ahead. Get your clothes ready, get your coffee maker ready for Monday morning, get your laptop ready, put it by the door, get ready to go. And you set yourself a bedtime so you can get to sleep by Monday. I know that one sounds a little corny for adults, right? Set yourself a bedtime. What are you, seven years old? Set yourself a bedtime. That's part of that intentional timekeeping and that intentional boundary you're setting. I'm not going to stay up till 3 o' clock in the morning watching shows, playing games, watching movies. Matthew Oxie [00:31:13]: I have things to do in the morning. Matthew Oxie [00:31:15]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:31:17]: If you're thinking to yourself throughout this whole scenario, didn't you just say watching Netflix for 48 straight hours is bad? Matthew Oxie [00:31:28]: It. Matthew Oxie [00:31:28]: You're, you're correct. I did use that example, that rather hyperbolic example to showcase how watching Netflix for 48 hours can be deleterious to your well being as a student. However, I want you to think about the differences between these two scenarios. The first served a good purpose. It, it served. It had good intentions at, at first, but quickly devolved into neglect of our well being. Matthew Oxie [00:32:00]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:32:01]: If we got so overwhelmed throughout the week that we decided we're just going to turn ourselves off for the next 48 hours. In a way we can appreciate it. Matthew Oxie [00:32:12]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:32:12]: We're taking time to reset, but if overdone, it causes harm. The second scenario on the other hand, showed how intentionally planning to do something like that. You know, intentionally planning that weekend. We've set our boundaries, we're keeping time limits and we've allowed for nearly two whole days of self soothing activities. Matthew Oxie [00:32:39]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:32:40]: How these intentional pieces can allow for this extended self soothing while also setting us up for success for a potentially stressful week. Matthew Oxie [00:32:49]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:32:52]: It sounds similar in practice. It is very different. I know self care can be hard. I know implementing these things can be hard. Especially when we have our routines that work so well. There are so many external pressures. It's like you have to focus on me. You have to focus on me right now. Matthew Oxie [00:33:09]: You can't look at anything else. You have to pay attention to me right now. Matthew Oxie [00:33:13]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:33:15]: And at times it's very easy to feel like we are drowning under these expectations. There are so many at once. It feels like we are drowning under these expectations. I encourage you guys to take a screenshot of this. I'll send these slides to Dr. Lewis later as well. In addition to the recording, I'll have some other links that go in there too. We'll talk about here in a little bit. Matthew Oxie [00:33:36]: I encourage you guys to practice self care. Practice it over and over and over again. It might take a few times to get right. You might find that trying to prep the night before to make your morning a little less stressful doesn't help you at all. You might find that removing email off of your phone, it makes it so much worse. Makes your day so much more stressful than it needs to be. Not being able to check your email, right? Practice. This is different person to person. Matthew Oxie [00:34:07]: Practice being intentional with your time, with your boundaries. Practice being intentional. Intentionality is the key for true self care. Speaking of time, I would be remiss if I did not talk about time management skills in a lecture like this. It feels a little redundant. You guys are graduate students. I'm not going to sit here and be like, you should get a planner. You should get an app on your phone. Matthew Oxie [00:34:36]: You should set yourself for reminders. You have been in school, some of you, 20 odd years, right? You know how to keep yourself balanced, I guess, when it comes to that kind of time management. But I want to talk about time management and prioritizing tasks, right? Using what we know about self care from the previous slides, we can Work to establish a schedule that allows us to both complete necessary tasks as well as rest and recharge. Now, like I said, this can look different student to student. I will give you an example that I have used in the past in therapeutic situations. What I sometimes tell students to do is to stop studying after a certain time, right? Time management and prioritizing tasks. We have an exam on Friday, Today's Monday, right? When the week, as the week progresses, stop studying by a certain time. Matthew Oxie [00:35:41]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:35:42]: This builds on a point that I will talk about here in a little bit. Those assignments taking as long as you give them, but when we practice intentionally. All right, 9pm Book is closed. I have two hours to do whatever I want for the rest of the night that does not involve school or studying. That intentionality helps us not only prioritize ourselves, right? We get some free time. We get to unwind a little bit, do something that we've been looking forward to, even if it's just nothing scrolling on our phone. I could sit here and talk about the negative effects of scrolling on your phone, but I'm also a person who enjoys TikTok and Instagram and am prone to scrolling on my phone after a long and stressful day. It happens, right? But when we set that boundary with ourselves, not only do we prioritize our own well being, we also prioritize the exam. Matthew Oxie [00:36:39]: You've got class from, I don't know, 8am to 4pm you're going to get a little food afterwards and you're going to hunker down from five to nine and study. That causes you to prioritize studying effectively. If you've only got four hours, it doesn't do you any good to sit there on TikTok because you know you can do that later. I know this varies student to student, like I said, but when we put these kind of limits on these things and we put that hard time limit, for example, it allows and in a way forces us to get the most out of that study period. For this example exam. This leads into my next point that deadlines can be stressful, but they can provide a great framework for us to work in. An excellent framework. Now, there's a very extensive review done in 2020 and it talked about the impact of stress on graduate students. Matthew Oxie [00:37:40]: One of the things it highlighted in this review, I don't remember the paper it found it from, but it showed that some stress can be helpful when completing works such as working on a thesis or masters or doctoral. Matthew Oxie [00:37:57]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:37:58]: I believe the proper term is actually Eustress. There's the, the difference between eustress and distress. We're very, we're very comfortable with the idea of distress. Matthew Oxie [00:38:08]: Right. Matthew Oxie [00:38:09]: I have to, I don't have any time to do homework. I feel very distressed. It's all right there. Sometimes there is eustress. Sometimes these deadlines cause this sort of positive stress in our life. Instructor, determined dates for exams and papers can help guide studying and researching. They can help guide that intentional self care. Matthew Oxie [00:38:31]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:38:32]: I use the example of the exam, no matter what, it's going to be done on Friday as an example statement. You can apply this to any homework assignment, group project, doctoral thesis exam, clinical, oz, key. Whatever you have to do, right? It's going to get done by Friday. This allows us to work with that. Intentionality works with boundaries. Sometimes it involves telling people no. Sorry guys. I love trivia night. Matthew Oxie [00:39:03]: I love my Tuesday night trivia. For example, I can't go tonight. I have a very important paper I have to work on. I'll see you guys next week. We're intentional in what we are and are not doing right while prioritizing ways to keep us healthy. I mentioned earlier that assignments can take as long as you give them, right? This was actually said to me by a friend a couple years ago after we were both long out of school. I, it may be obvious by the way, I'm very kind of casually talking about this topic. I was never the kind of student to work on things really, really, really far in advance. Matthew Oxie [00:39:44]: Never was my thing. Always been a last minute kind of guy. Definitely didn't put the finishing touches on this presentation this morning. I would never do that and I would never tell my lecture group about that. Matthew Oxie [00:39:55]: Am I right? Matthew Oxie [00:39:56]: But while having a conversation with this friend, they mentioned to me that assignments take as long as you give them. What she meant by that was, let's say I give you a paper due in two weeks. If you say, ah, I gotta work on it right now, it's due in two weeks, I gotta work on it right now. You are gonna go back to that paper every single day. Even when you think you finish it, you're gonna go back every day, you're gonna try to make changes. And that stress is gonna last for two whole weeks, right? If you only give it the evening, well, Thursday night I better start that paper I was given two weeks ago. The stress is only going to last for the evening. Now, I think both of those examples are a bit extreme. Matthew Oxie [00:40:42]: And having lived a lot of my life in the latter, I can tell you that it does get stressful and that's not the advice I am telling you to do. I am not telling you to put off all of your your assignments until the last minute. That's not the best tactic. What I'm saying is these assignments take as long as we give them. So feel free. Please utilize your self care and utilize your self soothing. I have a quote right below that. It says it's okay to not. Matthew Oxie [00:41:12]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:41:12]: It's okay to not do homework for a night. It's okay to take a night off and go to trivia. You've got a huge exam on Friday and you studied Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, throughout the day on Tuesday you had classes and lectures. It's okay to go to Tuesday night trivia. It's okay to not. Just as it's okay to not partake in things that are a little bit more enjoyable when you have to lock in as the kids say and focus on what you have to do. It's okay to not neglect other important pieces like that self care and that self soothing that we talked about. This is something that I always express to students who come into my office, right? Always try to mention that it is okay to not. Matthew Oxie [00:42:01]: There are so many expectations that sometimes we forget all the things we talked about a couple slides ago. Matthew Oxie [00:42:13]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:42:13]: If I ask you guys to recount all of the things that were on your plate, does anybody think they could list them all off from memory in order? Probably not. I can't even do that. And I made the presentation and I have the speaker notes in front of me on a separate window. I could scroll back up and look and I don't remember off the top of my head. Professors, managers, family members, friends, they may not realize all of the things that are on our plates. Despite understanding in a way, yeah, grad students are stressed. They may not know the full extent of it. Only we know truly what each of us are dealing with throughout our time in graduate school. Matthew Oxie [00:42:56]: It is okay to not. Now. We have talked about a lot of ways to practice that are a little bit more theoretical I guess because they vary so much person to person and this is not a psychological well being group. So I'm not trying to, you know, and ask everyone like, so what are your stressors? How can we work it out individually? That's not what I'm talking about. But I want to give you guys some general things that we can engage in here, right? Get involved, get involved, get involved. Get physical. Matthew Oxie [00:43:35]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:43:36]: Join your local or university sponsored sports teams. If you guys are on campus, the U of M Flint Rec center and all of its programs are free for all U of M students, even graduate students. They are all free. I don't even know if you need a membership. You show up with your M card, swipe, you are good to go. Matthew Oxie [00:43:54]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:43:56]: Get yourself involved in community wellness practices. Matthew Oxie [00:44:01]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:44:02]: Join local gyms, join running clubs, join athletic sporting teams, join walking groups. I believe there's actually a walking group at the rec center. Funny enough, it might be a community walking group or might be a student staff walking group. I believe every day, maybe every like Wednesday or Thursday, they walk around. Ask someone at the rec center about that because I believe that actually does exist here on campus. And you talk about, you know, getting involved with community wellness practices. I don't know if you guys have seen your email, but Flint does bike tours. There's bike tours all around Flint that talk about the history of the various parts of the city. Matthew Oxie [00:44:39]: I know there's one coming up in October of like haunted Flint. That one sounds like quite a bit of fun. I know some of this stuff isn't always as straightforward, right? We recently had a staff breakfast last weekend. Again, this is a little more anecdotal, a little less empirical, as it were. Dr. Jerusalem, Dono mentioned in our whole DSA gathering that over 50% of graduate students are enrolled in online programs. Which means some of you guys might not be on campus at all or ever. Matthew Oxie [00:45:14]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:45:14]: Riley was actually just telling me that a couple of members of her social work cohort don't even live in Michigan. Matthew Oxie [00:45:20]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:45:22]: Please don't let that encourage, discourage. Please don't let that discourage you. Matthew Oxie [00:45:27]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:45:27]: Please don't let that discourage you from getting involved and engaging in campus activities if you live two hours away. I get it. No one wants to drive to Flint for four hour round trip for a two hour spin class. Totally understand that. Matthew Oxie [00:45:42]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:45:43]: But if we're close, don't let that discourage you from getting involved. And don't let it discourage you your your status as a graduate student. Don't let it discourage you from getting involved in other ways too. Might live two hours away. You might live in Lansing, Grand Rapids. You might live in the metro Detroit area. You might be up in the up. You might be out of state. Matthew Oxie [00:46:04]: You can still find a local gym. You can still find a way to involve yourself in community. We'll talk about other ways here. Please don't let it discourage you. Graduate students are. We want you guys at our activities just as much as as other other populations of students. Get mental if you've gotten Physical. Now let's get mental. Matthew Oxie [00:46:26]: Let's get emotional. Utilize the available mental health resources both on and off campus. Speaking of shameless self promotions, the CAPS office here at U of M Flint is free for all U of M Flint students, even graduate students. The only exception is that if you live out of state, we cannot see you if you are within the state of Michigan and enrolled in classes. And at the University of Michigan Flint we offer counseling services that are totally free. I like to joke that that actually makes us the most expensive therapy provider in Genesee county because graduate tuition is way more expensive than outpatient therapy. But it's already included. So if you need to feel free to come utilize the service as a graduate student. Matthew Oxie [00:47:12]: If, say for example, therapy is not your thing or maybe you already have a therapist. We have reflection and sensory rooms all over campus. If you guys are on campus, I know specifically for my students over in the white building, it can feel like when you're on the other side of the river. There's no way to get over to the south side. There's no way that we can get to the use ending CAPS to utilize their wellness resources. We have many of these rooms on campus. We've got one in the library. We've got one in the CAPS office here in the University Center. Matthew Oxie [00:47:46]: Usen and I learned today that we actually have a sensory room in the white building. Room 1209. Go. I've never been there myself, but I've learned about today. It's on our University Health and wellness page. Go check it out. Matthew Oxie [00:47:58]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:47:58]: These rooms help you relax and unwind a little bit. The CAPS office again, because we're so cool. Have a bunch of other wellness resources in addition to our sensory room. We have a biofeedback machine. We have a Happy Light as they call it. And we even have a massage chair that literally nobody uses. You guys could book time on our massage chair and CAPS and come use it today if you wanted to. Well, we're almost close, so maybe not today, but early in the winter. Matthew Oxie [00:48:30]: U of M Flint is oftentimes our week of wellness. Matthew Oxie [00:48:33]: Right? Matthew Oxie [00:48:34]: Keep an eye out on your email over the next couple of months to hear about Week of Wellness. In addition to doing a bunch of fun giveaways and things like that, it really is a great environment on campus to promote student well being throughout those eight dimensions that we talked about earlier. Speaking of keeping your eyes out for things on campus, get social. Get social with it. Visit Campus Connections for all the latest event updates for both on campus and online programs. That is the most commercial sounding thing I have said in this entire lecture and for that I apologize. This is not a paid advertisement by Campus Connections, right? This is something you can utilize. Log into as a, as a U of M. Matthew Oxie [00:49:20]: Flint student and get the lowdown on what is happening around campus. There are a lot of great programs that again, promote wellness that are oftentimes totally free. Finally, we talk about getting social. Connect with your family, friends and peers. When we have this kind of amount of stress on our plate that we talked about, we have the stress, we have all of the expectations. It can be a lot. And I know talking about it can be hard as well. Take it from me, as someone who both listens to people talk about it and struggled to talk about it myself in graduate school, it can be a lot. Matthew Oxie [00:50:00]: Connect with your family, connect with your friends, Connect with your peers in class. Connect with your cohorts. Even if you guys are all remote, have a game night, right? Connect with one another. As I mentioned earlier, humans are social creatures and the connection is vital to helping us stay afloat, keeping our heads above water. I want to thank you all so much for coming to this lecture here today. I hope you guys have learned a thing or two about how to kind of balance and manage all these expectations in graduate school. I hope you guys have learned about the dimensions of wellness. I hope, most importantly that you have learned the difference between self care and self soothing and how you guys could apply that to your day to day lives. Matthew Oxie [00:50:43]: And I hope you guys are encouraged to get out and get involved. Talk to people on campus or off campus. When I send Dr. Lewis the slides, I'm going to send him some additional links. Links to the rec center, links to the CAPS office, links to campus connections. Things that you as students can and absolutely should utilize. Remember, they're all free. So like I said, thank you so much. Matthew Oxie [00:51:07]: Dr. Lewis, I'm going to turn it back over to you. You can close us out. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:51:10]: Well, thank you all for coming today. Really appreciate it. Thank you Matthew for all of this amazing information and I wish you all the best as you're moving through your graduate school experience. Thank you so much for your time today and for being here. The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs. If you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for for in person or online learning options, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, Visit umflint.edu/graduateprograms to find out more. Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:51:44]: Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at [email protected].