This week, our team present the different aspects of a successful graduate school life. My teammate give a good summary of those perspectives, which is shown in follow picture.
The different aspects of PhD life includes motivation, academia business, game rules, initiative, tenacity, flexibility, interpersonal skills, organizational skills, communication skills, balance& perspective. Here I won't go into the details about these, and the essay about this could be found here.
I would mention here is the tricks and lessons I learned from others during the class discussion about motivation and organization skills.
One trick about motivation, Dr. Tapia shared with us is to motivate yourself with reward of pleasure. Once you wanna socialize with your friends, or relax yourself, you can first set a goal to finish some work and then reward your work with the social activities or other recreation. This method works for me: every Sat. afternoon I can't wait for playing soccer with some friends, but before that, in that morning, I will encourage me to finish a certain work and then go to the field.
For the motivation, punishment never works. Sometime, we use punishment to make up our watse of time. For example, because I watch a movie and take up the time to finish some works, I would punish myself to sleep late to finish the work. However, this doesn't work each time. It just make you feel more inefficient and guilty about yourself.
How to manage your time? Dr. Tapia said she would like to finish difficult thing in the morning, like writing, and do some easier work at night. This could be a good strategy, because in morning, we could work more efficient, and after finishing the tough things, you will be confident about the rest of the day.
Another trick about time management discussed in class is to never make your work and leisure get touched. This means that at home you just get relaxed, have dinner, and chat with your roommates, and your office is the place you work. Never think that you can work and finish something at home. That would be very inefficient.
The final thing I agree with is that "Graduate school isn't worth risking your personal relationships over". Indeed, we need to save time and energy to focus on the people who matter to you.
 |
The different aspects of PhD life includes motivation, academia business, game rules, initiative, tenacity, flexibility, interpersonal skills, organizational skills, communication skills, balance& perspective. Here I won't go into the details about these, and the essay about this could be found here.
I would mention here is the tricks and lessons I learned from others during the class discussion about motivation and organization skills.
One trick about motivation, Dr. Tapia shared with us is to motivate yourself with reward of pleasure. Once you wanna socialize with your friends, or relax yourself, you can first set a goal to finish some work and then reward your work with the social activities or other recreation. This method works for me: every Sat. afternoon I can't wait for playing soccer with some friends, but before that, in that morning, I will encourage me to finish a certain work and then go to the field.
For the motivation, punishment never works. Sometime, we use punishment to make up our watse of time. For example, because I watch a movie and take up the time to finish some works, I would punish myself to sleep late to finish the work. However, this doesn't work each time. It just make you feel more inefficient and guilty about yourself.
 |
How to manage your time? Dr. Tapia said she would like to finish difficult thing in the morning, like writing, and do some easier work at night. This could be a good strategy, because in morning, we could work more efficient, and after finishing the tough things, you will be confident about the rest of the day.
Another trick about time management discussed in class is to never make your work and leisure get touched. This means that at home you just get relaxed, have dinner, and chat with your roommates, and your office is the place you work. Never think that you can work and finish something at home. That would be very inefficient.
The final thing I agree with is that "Graduate school isn't worth risking your personal relationships over". Indeed, we need to save time and energy to focus on the people who matter to you.
 |
Leave a comment