Addressing Graduate School Challenges

Strategies for Addressing Graduate School Challenges

U.S. author and historian Will Durant is quoted as saying, “Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance.” Students pursuing higher education are constantly in a process of realizing how much information is available, how quickly new concepts and strategies are being invented, and how woefully unprepared they are to assume a contributing role in the workforce. By adopting good coping strategies, taking time to consider one’s options and approaching one’s degree program with a confidently sketched out “plan of attack,” graduate students can most effectively manage difficulties with new technologies, personal motivation and a debilitating fear of failing, thus maximizing the graduate experience.

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One of the most common practical problems all students contend with is technological difficulty. Because the field in general is in a constant state of forward progress, students have to keep up with ever-changing systems and software. Databases such as JStor and ProQuest are valuable resources, enabling students to access more documents than an individual library might be able to hold. However, resources such as these are consistently being updated, refined, and new repositories are developed regularly. It is challenging to keep up with additions and augmentations: for example, knowing what material is needed or desired for an assignment is not necessarily enough. A person needs to know the best way to call up relevant information and sift through dense listings in order to capture the essential information. Stress related to technology has even been recognized as an illness: Professor Scott T. Meier (1986) references the negative psychological reactions to the computer as “computerphobia,” termed by Jay; “computer anxiety,” designated by Rohner; and “computer aversion,” according to Meier (p. 100).

On an even more practical level, savvy technology often makes work easier to process, but it also increases the likelihood for many more problems. Most students have personally experienced computer crashes, lost or corrupted documents, or misplacing floppy disks or USB drives. Unfortunately, in our ever-faster paced world, people’s ability to slow down and focus on a single task is waning. Hours of good work can be lost in a moment due to distraction.

The primary strategy to reduce this challenge is to avoid procrastination. Most accidental erasures and file loss happens because the student is hurrying to complete an assignment and does not pay attention to correctly saving the work often. If the student begins working on the pa