Don’t think about why you’re applying. Select a topic for entirely strategic reasons. Choose the coolest supervisor. Write only to deadlines. Expect people to hold your hand. Become “that” student. When it comes to a masters or PhD program, most graduate students don’t deliberately set out to fail. Yet, of the nearly 500,000 people who start a graduate program each year, up to half will never complete their degree. Books abound on acing the admissions process, but there is little on what to do once the acceptance letter arrives. Veteran graduate directors Kevin D. Haggerty and Aaron Doyle have set out to demystify the world of advanced education. Taking a wry, frank approach, they explain the common mistakes that can trip up a new graduate student and lay out practical advice about how to avoid the pitfalls. Along the way they relate stories from their decades of mentorship and even share some slip-ups from their own grad experiences. The litany of foul-ups is organized by theme and covers the grad school experience from beginning to end: selecting the university and program, interacting with advisors and fellow students, balancing personal and scholarly lives, navigating a thesis, and creating a life after academia. Although the tone is engagingly tongue-in-cheek, the lessons are crucial to anyone attending or contemplating grad school. 57 Ways to Screw Up in Grad School allows you to learn from others’ mistakes rather than making them yourself.

When it comes to a masters or PhD program, most graduate students don't deliberately set out to fail. Yet, of the nearly 500,000 people who start a graduate program each year, up to half will never complete their degree. Books abound on acing the admissions process, but there is little on what to do once the acceptance letter arrives. Veteran graduate directors Kevin D. Haggerty and Aaron Doyle have set out to demystify the world of advanced education. Taking a wry, frank approach, they explain the common mistakes that can trip up a new graduate student and lay out practical advice about how to avoid the pitfalls. Along the way they relate stories from their decades of mentorship and even share some slip-ups from their own grad experiences.

Success in Graduate School and Beyond is designed to empower graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in STEM with practical tools, tips, and skill development strategies to plan and create their dream career pathway. Intended as a professional development course book, this balanced, self-reflective guide to workplace readiness is organized into five sections that support graduate student development: self-reflection, wellness, skills, networking, and planning for future success. Written in a conversational style, this guidebook includes clear learning outcomes based on the authors’ successful graduate professional development course at the University of Toronto. Covering increasingly important career subjects such as mentorships, transferrable skill development, emotional intelligence, and EDI, this guidebook solves a skills gap and builds core competencies demanded from industries and academia. Interspersed personal accounts from the authors about key topics and seven Alumni Career Profiles describing various career trajectories work to encourage self-awareness and promote essential skill development and networking proficiency. With this book, STEM students will be equipped with the abilities and tools to achieve success in graduate school and beyond.

Cultivating respectful and productive academic relationships is a priority within higher education. What can faculty do when conflict disrupts research progress and strains the supervisor/student relationship? Supervising Conflict offers practical advice and tools to help faculty identify and actively respond to the most common grad school concerns – the "everyday" conflicts. Drawing on data collected over four years at a large research-intensive university in Canada, Heather McGhee Peggs provides faculty with a map to where issues are likely to emerge based on hundreds of coaching conversations with faculty and students. While ideally every campus would have a dispute resolution office and a graduate peer support team to help individuals navigate conflict, the reality is that faculty are often managing complex and difficult situations on their own. This unique resource combines negotiation and fair complaints-handling principles with insights from a multidisciplinary graduate peer team and highlights the critical role that equitable, restorative, and trauma-informed approaches can play in the emergence and resolution of conflict. This book includes opportunities for self-reflection, real-life case studies, and activities for professional faculty development. Supervising Conflict guides administrators seeking to address graduate concerns earlier and more effectively at a systemic level.

What’s the hardest part of grad school? It’s not simply that the workload is heavy and the demands are high. It’s that too many students lack efficient methods to let them do their best. Professor Zachary Shore aims to change this. With humorous, lively prose, Professor Shore teaches you to master the five most crucial skills you need to succeed: how to read, write, speak, act, and research at a higher level. Each chapter in this no-nonsense guide outlines a unique approach to acquiring a skill and then demonstrates how to enhance it. Through these concrete, practical methods, Grad School Essentials will save you time, elevate the quality of your work, and help you to earn the degree you seek.

How are the human and institutional systems fundamental to succeeding in academia?In graduate school we are trained how to be scholars, and maybe how to be effective teachers. But there is much more to being a college or university faculty member--and most of it is left to figure out on one's own. This job isn't hard because the core scholarship is hard, but because of thecomplex mix of activities that scholars must figure out how to juggle. These are dominated by human and institutional structures within departments, universities, societies, and professional communities. Succeeding and thriving as an academic calls for developing wider, "non-academic" insights andskills into how these operate and how to operate effectively with, and within, them. Functioning as an academic is about the relationships we develop with our communities of students, campus colleagues, professional peers, and our university administrative and support staff--the people who enablefaculty members to function.Your Future as a Faculty Member: How to Survive and Thrive in Academia is organized into four sections, each focusing on one aspect of the human systems that are fundamental to succeeding as an academic. Section 1 starts in the center with new professors, as they build their career. Section 2 looksat university administrative systems and the staff who manage them. Section 3 focuses on teaching and training roles. Finally, Section 4 looks at wider professional networks outside of university, publishers and academic communities.

From the creator of the popular website Ask a Manager and New York’s work-advice columnist comes a witty, practical guide to 200 difficult professional conversations—featuring all-new advice! There’s a reason Alison Green has been called “the Dear Abby of the work world.” Ten years as a workplace-advice columnist have taught her that people avoid awkward conversations in the office because they simply don’t know what to say. Thankfully, Green does—and in this incredibly helpful book, she tackles the tough discussions you may need to have during your career. You’ll learn what to say when • coworkers push their work on you—then take credit for it • you accidentally trash-talk someone in an email then hit “reply all” • you’re being micromanaged—or not being managed at all • you catch a colleague in a lie • your boss seems unhappy with your work • your cubemate’s loud speakerphone is making you homicidal • you got drunk at the holiday party Praise for Ask a Manager “A must-read for anyone who works . . . [Alison Green’s] advice boils down to the idea that you should be professional (even when others are not) and that communicating in a straightforward manner with candor and kindness will get you far, no matter where you work.”—Booklist (starred review) “The author’s friendly, warm, no-nonsense writing is a pleasure to read, and her advice can be widely applied to relationships in all areas of readers’ lives. Ideal for anyone new to the job market or new to management, or anyone hoping to improve their work experience.”—Library Journal (starred review) “I am a huge fan of Alison Green’s Ask a Manager column. This book is even better. It teaches us how to deal with many of the most vexing big and little problems in our workplaces—and to do so with grace, confidence, and a sense of humor.”—Robert Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No Asshole Rule and The Asshole Survival Guide “Ask a Manager is the ultimate playbook for navigating the traditional workforce in a diplomatic but firm way.”—Erin Lowry, author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together