Post 75: BC's Climate Leadership Plan -- Get Involved!

As graduate students it's far too easy to get lost in the bubble of campus. Depending on your research, you might not even be compelled to leave campus, find ways to connect with policy, find ways to connect with the wider community. So, it's exciting when an opportunity to get involved does appear!

One such is the the Province of British Columbia's Climate Leadership Plan! This plan is now in its second phase, which means that from now until March 25th, you can download and read their "Consultation Guide" and then participate in either their online survey or email them at climateleadershipplan@gov.bc.ca. 

Valentine's novelty tulips spreading their lovely petals and morphing as February continues to pass. 

The focus for the Climate Leadership Plan is for those participating—citizens, professionals, the young and elderly, voters, taxpayers, students—to provide feedback on what actions the Province can take to lower our greenhouse gas emissions and continue to find ways to participate in the emerging low carbon economies. BC was a leader in Canada with our revenue-neutral Carbon Tax, and I think that with the Alberta provincial government having recently released a bold and generally well-received Climate Leadership Plan, our provincial government is trying to keep its leadership position.
If you have some time, consider taking part! This is our future, and I know I look for ways to get involved in the governance and general direction of government more broadly, being someone who isn't satisfied with the idea that voting for our provincial government once every four years is an adequate level of participation in a modern democracy. 

Sometimes the best things in life are as simple as a mug of tea, especially when it's one made
by a friend's super-talented mother. Thank you Harriet (and Jenna)!!!

****
Little bit of extra perspective:

A while ago I sent an email out to a few of my peers, curious about some of their 'best' thesis advice or lessons learned along the way. Here are a couple of their tips:

From Jordan, putting the thesis experience in perspective: "The only thing I can think of is something [my supervisor] told me in my first year: A master's is about learning to ask the right questions. I remember his advice being particularly helpful at the time because it offset the immense expectations I'd built up in my head about having to find all the answers in a single thesis project."

From Emily: Annotate the heck out of documents and articles the first time you read them! A master's takes a long time to finish, and the things you read early on in your degree are not things that you remember reading when you're in your second year, starting to write up your research. You go back, and feel like you're reading everything for the first time. Do yourself a favour, and make meticulous notes only ONCE!

Post 47: Guest Post on Teaching from Garrett Richards!

Three weeks ago we had a lab meeting during which Garrett Richards was one of two guests, and we ran out of time to discuss his perspectives on transitioning into teaching, which I had been particularly interested in hearing about. Garrett is one of those wonderfully reflective people who produces excellent work all the time, because of his unending internal processes of introspection and thoughtfulness. Because of this, he's delightful to work with, and he follows up when he says he'll do something with/for you. He's currently in Saskatoon finishing writing his PhD and teaching sessionally.

Garrett generously emailed me after the meeting with these additional thoughts, which we didn't get to talk about during the lab meeting (it already went over time). So, from Garrett:

1) Obviously teaching is something to consider a little later in your graduate career. I don't know of many sessionals without a master's degree, and it seems to be a minimum requirement on any posting. Still, if you're interested in pursuing teaching, it's something to start thinking about even at the end of your master's, even if you won't teach for another few years. Some PhD programs, for instance, have a mandatory teaching component (e.g. after your classes and comprehensive exams you might spend one term teaching a course coordinated by your department) that might be attractive to you.

First apple tree blossoms I've found on campus! Love the splashes of pink through the white petals! 

2) Sessional teaching is super unreliable. In any given term, the courses you are able to teach (and want to teach) might not be available. At the University of Saskatchewan (UofS), one tricky thing about this is that ALL sessional opportunities get posted to the public, even if a department already suspects they will fill them with their regular sessional instructors. 

So you need to apply to a lot of them, but some are not even "real" postings. I didn't have that problem applying at UVic (not that I ended up teaching there), but it was a lot harder to find the postings to begin with. If the university where you end up doesn't have a convenient regular posting for all sessional positions like the UofS, email the department(s) you're interested in and ask how to be kept in the loop. Anyway, demand for completely new sessionals seems to be low, so don't plan on getting an appointment right away - apply for a few different terms and hopefully you'll stumble into a class that a new instructor has a chance at getting. Then you'll have some experience and connections, which might open up further opportunities.

3) Of course, if you manage to get a permanent appointment in some department (i.e. based on your research), the teaching doors may fly open, even if you don't have any teaching experience.

4) Teaching is a lot of work, and takes up a lot of mental space (especially if you're teaching in an area outside your research focus). Most graduate students will already be familiar with these challenges from TAing. Actually teaching a class is way more fun (i.e. you actually get to make decisions about what material to cover and what assignments to give) but quite a bit more work. I'm lucky to have a lot of public speaking experience, such that I don't have to write super-detailed notes for each lecture (I use my slides to guide me and just a few extra notes written on paper). 

And some latecomer cherry blossoms. The first started blooming in February, and now it's mid-April! Lovely!

I've heard a piece of advice that you shouldn't teach until you've drafted at least two chapters of your dissertation. Still, splitting your focus between teaching and writing is hard - I try to devote entire days to one or the other. I would expect to do 3-days-teaching and 2-days-writing each week for a big class, and the inverse for a small one (once you get into a rhythm). 2 new classes at once would probably take all your time, but I assume things get way easier when teaching a class a subsequent time.

5) Be proactive in asking questions to someone in the department. They may not plan on doing a lot of hand-holding, and you should feel free to do a lot independently, but there are some things you will need guidance with (just like when TAing). For my first appointment, I was a bit surprised at how little information I was given - I sent an email back with about 20 questions (e.g. Is there marking assistance? Where will my office space be? How much can I change from the existing syllabi? How do I access online parts of the course? Do I need to ask the bookstore to order textbooks for my students? et cetera). It's a bit tricky to balance guidance vs. independence - I overdid the independence a little bit in my first class and should have gotten someone to check over the mid-term I had developed before giving it to my class (i.e. it was too hard).

Thanks Garrett!! 

Post 46: Lab Meeting Guests, and Normalizing the Grad School Experience

This post has been brewing in my mind for a while, and now that I'm mostly over my flu (caught early last week on the Easter long weekend!), and TAing has wrapped up, I can engage in this space a little bit more again. In many ways this semester turned out to be much busier than I could have imagined it to become at the beginning of January. I knew I was staring down TAing a very big class with multiple tutorials, that I'd be trying to write a lot of my thesis, and that I would be keeping up with my hours for my second research project. At some point in those early weeks of the semester myself and my colleague Tanya took on the role of organizing our weekly lab meetings, too, and we set out on an ambitious schedule.

Due to difficulties with our technological setup at University House 4 (we didn't have a video-conferencing set-up, nor did we have functional space with a big screen to effectively share work or demo programs or such), our schedule was flexibly modified as the semester chugged along. Still, we included a good variety of meetings, from a discussion on short scientific presentation skills, to prep and planning for a conference many of us are attending in early May called Thinking Mountains, to overviews of Weebly (website development), Scrivener (a composition program), and Papers (citation program that plays well with Scrivener), student presentations and catch-ups, and a variety of guests, mostly PhD students, a post-doc student, and a visiting scholar from Australia.

Walking in the land of tulips! Makes me think of the tulip mania that took over the Netherlands during the 1600s. 

For the meetings with guests, I was particularly keen on hearing about their experiences during their graduate degrees, because in the recent months I have found it incredibly useful and wonderful and important to help me deal with the impostor syndrome, anxieties, and other concerns about graduate school. I've found that the more I hear stories about people experiences—good and challenging—about making it through grad school, the more I've gained perspective, built bonds with those colleagues, and found a way to really enjoy my experience all the more. In short, it's been a really useful way to normalize a lot of the experiences of going through this program, and it's been simply wonderful to make more connections and deepen my understanding of the graduate school.

So on top of asking about their current research projects, Tanya and I asked about what the most valuable advice was that each of them had received during their graduate experience, major roadblocks they'd encountered and how they overcame them, what formative experiences led them to carry on to do PhDs or further, and what they recommend for managing relationships with their research communities, including their committees and supervisors. For a couple of the later ones we also asked questions about the differences between PhD students and post-docs, and about experiences with transitioning into sessional teaching (this will be an upcoming guest post). Our guests included Frances Stewart, Christy James, Nancy Shackleford, Liese Coulter, Garrett Richards, Kira Hoffmann, and Jonaki Bhattacharyya.


Because there were so many of them—it's a shame that I didn't have more time to write on each closer to when they happened—and because I got too wrapped up in enjoying the stories and having our guests I only took sparse notes, so the below is going to be a very brief overview of what we all discussed and heard during those meetings.

Beautiful tulips on the walk to the bus down in Cadboro Bay! Love the colour!

Unsurprisingly, each graduate student has their own story: their own path to developing their interests in the field they're currently studying. And the advice or insights or stories each of them shared are as varied as the people telling them. It's amazing the territory discussions have covered with this diverse set of students, whether it's hearing about stories about the Elk Island National Park or the Cooking Lakes Moraine from Frances, where she is conducting her work on gene flow among a number of mesocarnivore (animal whose diet consists of mostly meat!) species, and learning about the genetic techniques used to figure out these landscape scale animal behaviours and relationships. Or then about Nancy's math background and her excellence at developing the networking skills that have enabled her to co-publish a number of publications very quickly. She described the process as "pulling together different people's strengths," and recommended working with "people that you like;" if someone's getting in your way or preventing you from reaching your goals, making the connections you want, or supporting your work, get them out of the way and find someone better! I also really loved hearing about her ideas about writing, during which she encouraged writing quickly and getting the writing out quickly, because someone else will fix the mistakes that you've made (give feedback). :)
Kira and Christy are both amazing women doing very interesting work! Christy on finding out about specific habitat ranges for a variety of bird species in the Willmore Wilderness. Christy's two cents: make sure to take the time to build relationships with your supervisors, and mentioned that when her supervisor says something's going to be easy, it definitely won't be! There are all sorts of curveballs that come along the way, and you work your way through them!

Kira identified a few different roadblocks, from struggling with a statistics course, to feeling the insidious isolation that we find at different parts of our grad school experience, but reminded us to be adaptive, as things always change. Further, "don't take yourself too seriously," and "Don't compare yourself to others." This last point is one that I can really identify with; some of my early grief in my program began with the constant comparing, and accompanying worry that I wasn't working hard enough, or doing enough, or learning quickly enough, or wasn't smart enough, etc. It is hard, though, when working with a bunch of fantastic, brilliant, and intelligent people!

Kira found a group of other PhD women working in ecology that became a sort of support group that's really been helpful for building  camaraderie and excitement and a deeper engagement with her graduate experience. This sounds very similar to what I've recently been enthusing about with my writing group! :) And one final bit of advice: meet with your supervisor regularly, even if you feel you don't have much to discuss. There is always more to discuss than you think! And it is good to check in with how things are going, and keep the forward momentum going.

And our dogwoods are blooming on campus now, too! :) Love these ones! 

Jonaki had some incredible stories, including about some of the adventures she had during her PhD, such as losing her hardrive and the backup of her hard-drive due advised us to be our own "project managers: set an agenda, go through the material;" your supervisors will appreciate the professionalism, and similar to Kira's advice, it will keep the momentum going.

Garrett had some really practical advice, too, and encouraged us to become much more assertive communicators, by asking for very specific things from our supervisors when it comes to feedback (he's also in the writing phase right now), and provided some useful ways to frame these requests: "This would be most helpful" or "I'd like this kind of feedback," which can guide the expectations for what he'd most like to hear from his supervisor.

Everyone has their ups and downs, and finds different ways to tackle the surprises and challenges that come along the way.

I'm sorry because in a way I can recognize that this post falls very short of expressing the delight of sitting in on the presentations, and hearing the varied experiences, the voices and stories of different researchers, and the adventures that they shared, but I hope this at least gives a little sense of these wonderful people.

The next post is going to be Garrett's recommendations on teaching, because that was one aspect I'd been particularly keen on hearing from him, but we didn't get a chance to talk about it too much because we ran out of time at the lab meeting!

If I do this again in the future, I will try much harder to write soon after each of the lab meetings with the respective guests.

Post 37: Advising students - to go to grad school, or not to go to grad school?

Over the past few weeks, I've been contacted by a couple students interested in chatting about grad school, and I was really excited to meet and chat with them. Considering grad school and options post-undergrad is a really exciting time for people, and I definitely approached this with enthusiasm and support, and from the perspective of encouraging them to consider their options fully.

Before going, however, I really had to think about what were really important things to emphasize about my journey through grad school, lessons learned, and things that I wish I had done differently or that otherwise would have been useful to know beforehand. So with this post, I'll cover a few of those things, but will start with a general discussion about mentoring undergrads and other students.

It's a lot of fun to share about my experience of grad school, but I decided that enthusiasm over my personal story shouldn't spill over to convince someone to go to grad school. It's a better discussion to approach from, Here's what I've learned since starting my program, and what might be useful for your to know when considering whether grad school may or may not be the right fit for you. There are a number of factors that people need to consider when deciding when it's a really good choice for someone. Part of that has to do with personal disposition, what they want out of grad school, if the program/supervisor is a good fit, and what their financial situation is.

Disposition: I'm someone who loves learning. Learning all the time. I read widely (sci-fi, fiction, literature, non-fiction, essays, poetry, etc.), I love film, I like music, and treat each of these things and something new I'm learning about the world. Since entering grad school, I've become much choosier about each of these things: learning to differentiate why I prefer one style over another, or what counts as a good source for research or not. Grad school has very much been a space for personal and professional development, and I'm glad that it has been.

I've also learned a lot by sitting on different committees (for selecting teaching awards and planning a graduate student conference), and I've taken part in all sorts of professional development workshops and conferences both on campus and elsewhere. I've learned how to use write and cite, how to make a conference poster, and how to take part in and give back to a writing group. I've learned that I quite like teaching. I've also figured out that I'm an introvert, and what that means for my teaching style. I've also learned a good bit about the impostor syndrome, and what that means for me as a student and how I view my accomplishments, and why I dwell so much on process. Almost all of these things are things that I wouldn't have anticipated before grad school, and I've loved learning all of them (even though some were really, really hard), but this also gives some indication to the kind of person I am, and how and why grad school's been a fruitful journey for me so far, considering I wanted a broad experience that didn't just churn me out as a good researcher by the end of the program.

Gorgeous look up valley out in the Goldstream Park right by Victoria. A nice dash of August green to challenge
the rainy grey of today!

Finances, funding, and resources

I was once told by a friend of mine in undergrad that people should not pay to go to grad school. And with almost no hesitation, I agree. In Canada, with a struggling job market (especially for younger educated people), we are having some trouble with education inflation, where having a bachelor's degree doesn't cut it anymore, and employers are preferentially choosing folks with at least a master's degree. Part of this is a crappy job market for young people, where employers can afford to be so choosey. This isn't great news considering that master's programs oftentimes are not an in-and-out kind of degree: even UVic's performance measures indicate that the average completion rate for master's degrees across the university is 4 years, and the average PhD program is 6 (see the graph buried on page 32 of the report). That's a long time, and that's a lot of money and stress and investment, considering most programs are advertised as 2 (master's) and 4 (PhD) years, respectively.

There are two things to emphasize here: it's not impossible to complete a master's in two years; one of the 13 students that started with me managed to do it. But that person was the exception. One of the students from my program has left, and the rest of us are still plugging along. We're not finished not because we haven't been working hard, but there's a whole lot more to a master's than I think a lot of us imagined when we began.

So, looking at the average numbers, and recognizing that funding typically covers the first two years of a program (this may vary in departments), I advise students to have an honest discussion with their potential supervisor or with the program graduate advisor to get a sense of which professors are taking on students, what completion rates are like, and/or other resources (such as the Thesis Completion Group, or the Centre for Academic Communication) that are going to get them finishing faster if they are on a tighter timeline. Finances are important, and when the funding runs out, as students take on part-time or full-time jobs to cover their money needs, it's no wonder that it can take longer for them to finish their programs. Talking about funding and funding possibilities (grants, scholarships, bursaries, etc.) that will help keep them covered while they study is key, too (oftentimes students still have debt from their undergraduate degrees). Discussing teaching assistant possibilities and other research work can be very important. As well, because grants like the big federal ones (SSHRC, NSERC, and CIHR) are frequently peer-reviewed, almost no school will turn you down if you've already been offered one of these grants; essentially, that grant offer is validating that you have demonstrated you have the potential to undertake excellent research. The MITACS program has also emerged in recent years as an important funding source for graduate students. Getting your financial ducks in a row is really, really important! :)

Finding the right supervisor is also important! A lot of grad school is learning about relationships: how to manage them when the stress and expectations are high, and when work needs to get done. How to do this collegially, with a mentor-supervisor? Learning how to ask the right questions, and figuring out when to ask for help. Learning how to understand feedback, and make revisions. These are all aspects of this professional degree that I've had to work on, and continue to. And a lot of it hinges on how well my relationship with my supervisor is going. I've heard of a few horror stories from other graduate students (admittedly mostly at the PhD level), about supervisors who don't let them finish, who don't agree that the student is ready, who give feedback completely opposite to what another committee member said, etc. Learning how to deal with these is a must, and with a supervisor that's rooting for you and on your team, you will succeed. :)

A shot downstream at the Sooke Potholes—a must-visit summer spot in the area! 

There were also a couple basic things that the students I spoke with asked about.

Are there different types of degree programs? Yes. There are course-based master's, project  based master's, and research based master's. The one I'm working on is a research based master's. We have coursework for the first 8 months of the program, then we launch our projects and head out to do the empirical work. (I know less about the other two, but by letting students know about other possibilities, they can go check them out).

After we complete the empirical work, we usually do some sort of analysis (this will differ based on methodologies), and then write up a thesis, which is disseminated to our supervisor and committee member, and when they approve that document, we head to a thesis defence, which includes a third member from outside the department, who also has an interesting look at your thesis, provides feedback and asks probing questions, and at that defence, that committee decides how much needs to be revised in the thesis document. There are 4 ways the result of the defence can go: 1. pass without revisions (very rare); 2. pass with minor revisions (common). 3. pass with major revisions (less common, but still somewhat frequent), and 4. fail (extremely rare). Basically, by the time your supervisor and committee member agree that you are ready to defend, you should be in pretty good shape. But thesis defences are still a really big deal—and the reason why the internet is full of all sorts of memes addressing defences (or offences!).

There's a lot that goes into considering grad school, and I definitely recommended for those students to talk to potential supervisors in advance. Also, talking to some of the grad students of supervisors (though this, I think, would be even more important if someone's considering a Phd), could be useful, too.

Post 36: There are multiple zooms on the thesis writing camera: on realizing that writing the thesis is an organizational puzzle!

For many months I stressed about getting started on writing my thesis, and over the past two months, I've realized that most of it was overblown worry on my part. Writing is a lot of fun (and I definitely send big THANK YOUS to my writing group), and has been for a long time for me. So why all the insecurity, hesitation, and balking about the thesis writing?

Part of it is the size of the project, undoubtedly. This is probably the biggest thing that I will produce in my life so far (!!!!). Part of it as well, is the scrambled, getting lost in the details on my part, too. I was getting lost in the little pieces, and gazing at the pattern on one puzzle piece, while diving to the pick up the next puzzle piece without figuring out where the first one went.

Here's where I'm going to employ the camera metaphor: writing a big project is knowing when to zoom in, and when to zoom out. I recently wrote a post about paragraph thinking: but realized afterwards that paragraph thinking is only useful when you already know where what you're writing goes! :)

When I met with my supervisor a few weeks ago, we had a really great discussion where we realized that part of why I was asking so many questions about which section goes where is because I was in macro mode, when I needed to be in landscape mode! When we realized that, he asked me to write out kind of a one-pager outlining my entire thesis, how I was splitting up and organizing chapters. It was almost a relief to finally sketch out chapter contents and realize: This has to go, this can't be there, this isn't closely related enough; Oh, this section will be shorter and smaller in scope.... after all, master's theses are only about 75-100 pages (even though I have seen quite a few in my department that have been upwards of 150 pages).

Local maidenhair ferns, Adiantum aleuticum, hanging out in a cool spot, keeping their feet wet at the Sooke Potholes! 

Now for a different metaphor: in the past two weeks I also realized that writing a thesis is really about figuring how to fit puzzle pieces together. I had been walking around with a section on my scientists drafted in mind for a bit (who they are, why them, the different collaborations they engaged in when I thought at the beginning of my project there were more discrete research organizations, challenges in contacting various groups of them, etc.), and thinking about my methodology/methods chapter and what would go in there (methodology, methods, challenges and limitations), and what would go into my introductory chapter (thesis questions, abstract, great opening quote, context of climate change and rapid ecological change, and why it's important we engage with scientists).

So between juggling the various puzzle pieces, and organizing them into borders, and breaking them into colours and compatible sections (best puzzle building strategy!), things have gotten a lot easier and feel much more manageable. And I definitely can't underscore how important the emotional part of this project has been so far! It's nice to feel the buzz of seeing progress being made.

Onwards and upwards to stitching my 4 main literature sections together! :)

Post 27: Best (By this, I mean Useful**) Thesis Advice So Far.

This post is written with the desire to give a nod to all the supportive voices and folks that have helped me weather my ups and downs along the way. I want to share some of the best advice that I've been given or encountered along the way. Positive reinforcement, right? This is necessarily a partial list because I have a poor memory and have undoubtedly forgotten some of the advice, or haven't written it down, and—I'm not done yet! So more will probably be coming.

1. "Best foot forward, one step at a time." This from the Buddhist philosophy of non-attachment. Let the hard things be hard. Each day that you start, the conditions will be different; you might have skipped breakfast to sleep in a bit more, or your cat got spooked at 3AM and rattled you out of your sleep, and you had to spend half an hour figuring out what happened, and calming the cat. So, begin each day fresh, with intention, and starting with goal setting as you go, based on how you think you can work that day.

2. "A master's is more about learning the skills than coming up with some genius discovery." This is classic Jenna, with her pearls of wisdom (slightly paraphrased).

3. "No fear!" from my supervisor. :)

                                   ...and then I can just be glad I live in this awesome place!

4. "Keep it simple, and as you go through your degree, pay attention to the realizations that suddenly become obvious to you." That's where you'll find the results and insights that you'll be writing about, but because they will also become 'obvious' to you, you may have difficulty reminding yourself that those are your findings, and that they are important to report. -- Karen, my awesome work buddy, office sharer, who also teaches as a sessional instructor, on research methods and methodologies in social work.

5. "The first draft of anything is shit." Thank you, Ernest Hemingway. :)

6. The advice from my supervisor was to find someone in my field, to talk to, and discuss ideas. There's nothing worse that can come from a poorly timed talk from someone doing different methods, using different ideas, than you are, that can make you panic and think that you're not being diligent. I'm sure every grad student goes through some point where they're gripped by the fear of not reading enough, or widely enough. So, talk it out with someone who shares your methods (or very similar ones). I can't thank my colleague Garrett enough for all the conversations and discussions over lunches sitting outside our building in the sunshine this summer. So good! He's also doing science studies research, and is certainly a bona fide social scientist in the making. And, we've discussed everything from specific methods and approaches, to how to write up a lit review. So good.

7. Effective procrastination: this from Laurie Waye's "Managing your Thesis or Dissertation: A Workbook for Students." Essentially, she points out that ineffective procrastination is when you are supposed to do work on a certain thesis something, but instead you go do the dishes, or fold your socks, feeling guilty and spending precious mental space beating yourself up because you know you should be doing thesis work instead. Effective procrastination is when you are unsure of how to proceed with say, starting chapter 2, or beginning the summary on that book, so, you go for a walk to clear your thoughts and think about how to start. Or, you have questions that arose from the last article you read, so you need to think them through a bit more, so you go for a walk to do so. You're still spending time working (thinking ideas through), and you're still focused on what you have to accomplish. Win, win!

8. From my lovely committee member: on tackling the imposter syndrome: don't take yourself too seriously, and approach all of your work with a bit of humour. :) AND—send stuff out. The more feedback you can get, and the sooner, the better. (Obviously the things you do send should be in pretty good shape, but yes, getting something to your supervisor is probably a good idea!).

(P.S. I'll come back and update this post periodically, as more 'best advice' comes in; if it gets too long, I'll break it into two posts, but that's maybe less likely at this point. Stay tuned!)
(**P.P.S. Each of us needs different advice at different times. If you have a pocket of time, and someone hands you a novel, you may just take it. If you're already curled up in a chair in a library, with three books on a table beside you and your imagination buried in the book in your hands, you might accept it, but it might also be refused. I've certainly noticed that some things said to me earlier only make sense now, looking back over the various phases of the thesis. So, take the advice above in stride, you might not need to hear some of it yet, and for others, it might just be the right thing, whereas next week, you'll notice it's no longer useful.)