There were eight of us sitting there: four professors, three students and one dean. We all came to Johnson Hall 303 to hear people present their theses or various other projects. Some were qualitative based, some were quantitative based, and some were projects that had been created while in graduate school (such as mine, a website created in my COMM 240 class titled “Going Green in Milwaukee”). No matter the project, we were all here for one reason: to learn new theories and practices about how we communicate. Welcome to the spring 2008 research symposium.
The research symposium, held once a year during the spring semester, is a time when people from all different corners of the College of Communication come together, share the ideas they have been working on, and get some free food. This year’s symposium ran all day, starting at 8:30 a.m. Friday and running to 3 p.m. It is broken up into three hour and a half sessions, during which different people present their projects, followed by a Q&A with the presenters. It is a time to have your ideas questioned, examined and critiqued — all in the hope of strengthening your thesis.
This symposium is what graduate school should be about. The celebration of learning, the sharing of cutting-edge ideas, and the ability to debate those ideas go to the heart of what graduate school, and universities in general, stand for. With all of the shrieking going on in place of true dialogue in the political sphere, it was nice to be part of an event where open discussion was not only accepted, but encouraged. I may have my criticisms of Marquette, but after attending one of these symposiums, I am glad to say that one criticism I do not have is the ability to share ideas. The food, on the other hand …
When I lived in Boston, after work every Friday once it got warm I would buy ice cream from my favorite little hole-in-the-wall store, Emack & Bolio. It makes the best ice cream in Boston (short of some of the gelato in the North End). So every Friday, like clockwork, I would buy a small cup of French vanilla with Heath bar topping, sit in the Boston Commons, and enjoy the fact that the week was over. The ice cream was not only a way to reward myself for completing another week, but it was also a way to remind myself life must be enjoyable. I think I am going to start this tradition again.
Obvious statement alert: Graduate school is hard, and sometimes it easy to get despondent and lose track of what is truly important. This is where the ice cream comes in. Maybe it’s the connection to my childhood, but for whatever reason, ice cream makes me happy. It just does. After eating a cup of French vanilla ice cream, I am in a good mood. I can breath easier, I deal with the world with a slightly nicer disposition, and the small details do not get to me like normal. I can think of very few ways that a few dollars can go any further. Now, the next trick is to find a good ice cream parlor. Any suggestions?
When Pittsburgh played Marquette in the semi-finals of the Big East basketball tournament a couple of weeks ago, I had friends and family alike ask me whom I was going to cheer for. Was it the university where I was an undergraduate (Pitt) or the university I am currently attending as a graduate student (Marquette)? After some thorough soul searching, I decided to root for Pitt because I feel more of a connection to my undergraduate university than I do here at Marquette as a graduate student.
This is not a knock on the friends I have made here. I am lucky in that I have met some wonderful people at Marquette and consider them to be close friends. It is just that being a graduate student is a vastly different social experience than being an undergraduate. Universities, and Marquette specifically, seem to be geared towards undergraduates (I have even heard professors bemoan this fact, albeit for a different reason) in that there are programs for undergraduates such as Marquette Idol, fairs on how to apply for internships, and dinner etiquette classes, just to name a few. Granted, these programs are open to graduate students, but they are marketed and intended for undergraduates. Also, there are more than 8,000 undergraduates, most of which take classes in different majors and departments, thus exposing them to more people.
Being a graduate student can be a lonely experience. I even once a heard a story from a professor of mine about a Marquette graduate student who became malnourished and despondent because he had was unable to make friends. I cannot verify if this story is true, but this anecdote exposes the fact that graduate students are isolated to people within their major. This can create an atmosphere where you feel at times like there is nowhere to turn. All of this is not to say that Marquette or any other graduate institution is at fault. All this is meant to say is that when I look back at my time at Marquette, I will probably feel like I got a first rate education but that socially, it is GO PANTHERS all the way!
For second year graduate students in the College of Communication, this is the week of dread since this weekend is comps. Comps, or comprehensive examinations, are an exam every second year Communication graduate student must take in order to graduate. For those doing a professional project or writing a thesis, comps are made up of two questions, each about two hours in length. For those choosing the class option, comps consist of three questions, not two. First, a couple of weeks before the test date, students are informed which professors will write their comps questions (one question per professor). Next, the professors give a rough sketch of what the questions is going to be, and then students take a few weeks to prepare for the questions and research their answers
The test itself is made up of two or three questions, each addressing a different aspect of graduate studies that have been learned over the past two years. For example, one question may be about qualitative research, another may be about a theory in journalism or public relations (depending on a student’s major), and another may be on a communication theory taught. To an extent, a question depends on which professor writes it. Each professor in the College of Communication has a different area of focus, and the point of comps is to tie in a student’s area of focus with a professor who has similar interests.
I am only a first year Communication graduate student, so I do not have to deal with the test until next spring. But I still do not understand the point of taking these tests other than as a graduation requirement. Doesn’t the fact that a student has gotten all the way to the end of his second year of gradate school imply that he can complete the assigned work? And if the goal is to provide a forum to show that a student can grasp and summarize the past two years of school, isn’t that what a thesis or professional project is for (not to mention grades)? Anyway, I do not get it. But hey, at least this is one worry I do not have to deal with for another year.
To try and give one a sense of the daily life of a graduate student, here is a breakdown of my typical Tuesday:
8:00 – 8:30 a.m.: Wake up and eat breakfast (normally Special K)
8:30 – 9:00 a.m.: Shower, get dressed, and make last minute additions to my book bag.
9:00 – 11:00 a.m.: Get to Johnson Hall, prepare for my BREC 45 (Broadcast Newswriting and Editing) class I TA, including making a quiz, finding the day’s headlines, and going to the IMC to take out equipment we use for the class.
11:00 a.m. – 12:50 p.m.: Teach BREC 45.
12:50 – 1:30 p.m.: Grade the quizzes, return the equipment, and complete various other TA tasks.
1:30 – 1:55 p.m.: Run and grab lunch from somewhere, and then eat as quick as someone who has not seen food in four days.
1:55 – 5:15 p.m.: Do whatever schoolwork I have planned for the day. (I always have schoolwork to do, so there is never enough time to get it all done.)
5:15 – 5:35 p.m.: Go grab dinner and eat like that starving boy all over again.
5:35 – 8:25 p.m.: Attend Journalism as Literature, my Tuesday night class taught by College of Communication Dean John Pauly.
8:25 – 11:00 p.m.: Walk to the Annex, prepare and participate in my weekly bowling league match (which I must admit is fun, even though I cannot bowl to save my life right now).
11:00 – 2:00 a.m.: Finish up the day’s leftover schoolwork.
2:00 a.m.: Smile, crash and prepare to do it all over again on Wednesday.
For those of you who will point out that I do not teach or bowl everyday, and thus am complaining based only on my most busy day, I remind you that while this is true, I do TA other days. When I am not being a TA or bowling, I am doing prep work for teaching or doing my own class work. Hence, there is never an easy day; a Tuesday is no different from a Sunday in that regard. So now you, oh faithful reader, know what a day in the life of a grad student is all about.
I need to repudiate the myth that graduate students are only in school for the learning aspect. It is true that part of the reason to go to graduate school is for the chance to understand a subject in more depth. However, this does not negate the fact that we indeed care about grades.
One of my professors has been saying for two weeks that we will get a grade back — a grade which will show us whether we need to change our ways or continue on the same path. For two weeks, we have heard that our grades will be returned, either by e-mail, left in our mailboxes or in class itself. Yet, so far nothing. Nada. Zilch
This seems to happen much more than when I was an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh. Most professors seem to operate under the illusion that grades are not important to graduate students. Not only is it an insult to promise something and blatantly not deliver, this belief is a fallacy. As a general rule, both undergraduate and graduate students care equally about grades because they indicate how one is doing in a class. How would this professor like it if he was never given an evaluation of his performance at Marquette? It would annoy him to say the least. So please, all graduate student professors, remember that us lowly graduate students really do care about grades as much as undergraduates.
She looked like a film noir heroine—maybe Lana Turner, maybe Barbara Stanwyck. Someone else was smoking near her, but it looked like the smoke curled out of her mouth, Vegas-style neon lights were on the wall behind her. Her hair had a platinum-blond look to it, and her eyes were a dark black, probably from the make up she wore. AC/DC was blasting over the jukebox. Cigarette and cigar smoke permeated the air. And I swear, sitting in the bowling alley looking around, I was not sure where I was, a dank pool hall circa 1955 or a bowling alley on 16th and Wells streets.
Just another Tuesday night bowling league, graduate student style. Half drank beer bottles were all over, talk of essays due stained the air and weird looking men dotted the landscape, giving the impression that while this is our bowling league, graduate students were not the only ones lurking. The bowling league, the cigarettes and the half drank bottles of beer were all ways to blow off steam — to try and have one night of normalcy among the vast amounts of work that pile up. All of which makes a Tuesday seem no different from a Saturday.
Some would call this atmosphere divey. Some would call it shady. I call it just right. While learning and intelligence are great, there is something soul satisfying about sitting in a bar — feeling like at any moment a fight may break out — that really brings life back down to reality. So while some people may bemoan the dankness of the Annex (and by extension our bowling league), I savor it. Because once the cigarette smoke dissipates and the beer bottles get cleaned up, the hamster cage of work starts all over again. And it is a lonely and dark seven days until I get to see Lana Turner again.
A friend of mine made an off handed comment about how graduate school professors do not take grading seriously. She felt as long the assignment was turned in on time and was somewhat coherent, the student would get at least an A/B. She said that graduate school professors are more interested in research, teaching undergraduates or writing a new book than actually taking the time to grade a paper honestly. “Hmm”, I thought, “Could this really be the case? Is my female friend being more cynical than even I am?”
To find out if this accusation is correct, I emailed Joyce Wolburg, associate dean for Graduate Studies and Research for the College of Communication. She responded, I couldn’t disagree more …” and provided me what she puts into the syllabus for the classes that she teaches. This blurb goes through a rundown of what is expected to acquire each grade.
For example, an “A paper not only fulfills the requirements of the assignment but shows a high level of abstract reasoning and critical thinking” while “Papers receiving an AB are still excellent papers, but the level of abstract reasoning, ability to think critically, and level of integration are not quite as strong.” She goes on to say what constitutes a B, B/C, C, and F paper, with each lower grade showing less insight or sloppy writing.
What Dr. Wolburg provided is insightful because it explains what makes up each grade, but it still did not answer my question, which is, do professors give out grades based on how much time they have and whether a paper is turned in on time, or do graduate students actually earn the grades they get? My guess is that some professor skate by handing out faux grades, while others take the time to evaluate a paper honestly and give it the grades it deserves.
Nothing is ever black and white and while it may be wrong to say, if a professor of mine wants to be lazy and give me a higher grade than I deserve (though I believe my work earns the high grades I get), I am not above taking it.
Last week I e-mailed Robert Skog, a friend of mine who graduated Marquette in December 2007 with a Masters of Arts in Communication with a specialization in Journalism, wanting to know how beneficial having a Masters degree from Marquette is and how helpful Marquette was in finding him a job.
“Having a Masters degree has helped me. In my recent job interviews, the interviewer has always commented about how great a Masters degree is especially since it came from a school like Marquette,” Skog wrote.
What I found especially interesting is when Skog wrote about how helpful Marquette and the Career Services Center in particular. He wrote that the Career Services Center “often have recruiters come in to hold interviews for certain jobs. I did not realize this until my last semester” and that “I’m not sure that Marquette does enough for Graduate Students and focuses more on Undergraduates.”
That being said, his response was not all negative towards Marquette. If you have the initiative to seek help, Career Services can provide some great advice. Its staff critiques your resume, offers tips on how to find a job, conducts mock interviews, etc. However, Skog wrote, “the university does not take the initiative in finding jobs for its students”.
The feeling I got from Skog is that while there is help to be found, it is not readily available. You have to search for it, and even then, career services is geared more towards finding jobs for undergraduates than graduate students. However, having a Masters from Marquette is exceptionally helpful because it gives off an aura of intelligence in that you were able to attain a degree. And there are jobs to be had in Milwaukee. Skog later informed me he had been offered a job involving research and statistics (Career Services did not help him find his job). As Meat Loaf sang, “Now don’t be sad, Cause two out of three ain’t bad.”
Ever feel like, as a graduate student, there is no one to help when things go south? Sampada Wakde, the Graduate Student Organization coordinator, wants all graduate students to know that GSO is “here to solve their problems.” One of these problems was the cost of healthcare, which had been $1,700 dollars per year for a graduate student. However, as a major issue for all graduate students, GSO fought and was able to reduce the cost of United Healthcare to $1,200 per year. The other major problem that has just been solved because of the work of GSO is that Marquette has decided to give out more assistantships to graduate students, thus providing them with some relief for the growing costs of being a graduate student.
With Kathryn Ryan as the new chair and Alfredo Cantoral the new vice chair of GSO (elections were this past December), this year’s GSO will be little like last year’s. According to Wakde, issues on the current agenda include adding more parking spaces for graduate students and a U-PASS built into tuition which would be used for educational trips and conferences. These new agenda issues are discussed at the monthly meetings, which all graduate students are allowed to attend. According to Wakde, there are currently 50 members who take an interest in GSO.
The plan right now is that various representatives throughout Marquette will be informed of what gets discussed in a GSO meeting, and they will than spread the gospel to all within said department. Wakde is hopeful that this year will be the best yet for GSO. As she put it, “all graduate students should attend our meetings if possible because we are here to help you.” For more information on how you can become active in GSO, visit http://www.grad.mu.edu/gso/ or e-mail gso@mu.edu.
Opinions expressed on this blog are that of the individual blogger and may not represent the views and opinions of the Marquette Tribune.