What do graduate students do in the summer

Read a little simply to keep your mind active. Do not study. Also, keep an eye out for topics that interest you. Note a stimulating newspaper article or website. Once the semester starts and you make contact with an advisor, you can sort through your ideas. Over the summer your goal should simply be to remain an active thinker. Overall, consider the summer before graduate school as a time to recharge and rest. Emotionally and mentally prepare yourself for the amazing experience to come.

Take as much time off as you can—and have fun. Log in to leave a comment. Blog Home About Main Site. Sign in. Forgot your password? Get help. Password recovery. Graduate Studies. Also, it was nice to spend an entire month in San Francisco and Boston respectively! This hopefully means a source of income.

And, it provides an opportunity to work one-on-one with a professor. I served on a small team of research assistants for one professor in my department in my fourth summer.

I found it refreshing to see that professor, who was my 2 adviser, working as a researcher. We were able to see how she made decisions along the way, how she dealt with obstacles and frustrations, and how excited she became as we made progress on a rather large interview project. In other words, we saw her as a human, rather than a professor who was always polished and organized. Broaden your teaching experience. There are also some opportunities to teach at other institutions.

In my third summer, I taught at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee as a diversity fellow. I taught sociology of sexualities — a course I had already taught; however, I was challenged to make course material accessible and relevant to a different student body. This experience was useful to broaden my pedagogical focus and toolkit.

The summer might also be a useful time to teach at different types of institutions — private vs. Broaden your network. Through the above suggestions, grad students can also focus on broadening their professional networks.

Through each summer program I attended, I made connections with both faculty and fellow student participants that I maintain today. These connections sometimes become friendships, lead to other professional connections, and possibly collaborations.

Your committee and other members of your department are important. But, so, too, are the connections you make with others at other departments and universities. It is who you know, right? I cannot say whether these summer-became-lifelong connections led to a job offer or some other opportunity. But I do know that I have benefited from advice and support from these contacts.

In general, I think it is useful to avoid falling into the trap of thinking exclusively of other members of your department as your colleagues. Eric Anthony Grollman is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Richmond. He is the editor of ConditionallyAccepted. Expand comments Hide comments. We have retired comments and introduced Letters to the Editor.

Share your thoughts ». There is nothing that you should be doing, but maybe depending on where you are in your studies, there are few things you should prepare. Getting ready for your dissertation? Do some research. Need a break? Take up a hobby or maybe travel a little. Especially if you are not engaged in supported research under an advisor.

Planning summer work also helps prepare you for a career in academia, where many contracts are months during the year. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. What should a graduate student be doing in the summer? Asked 4 years, 5 months ago. Active 4 years, 5 months ago.

Viewed 1k times. Improve this question. For the moment, voted to close as too broad. I think a country tag should be added to this question, or alternatively a brief sentence explaining the presumed situation that there is no "scheduled programme" during summer for the OP.

Having spent some time on this page, I am now aware that such seems to be the case in some places, but without that knowledge, my straightforward and, as the OP is probably subject to a different university system, rather useless to them answer would have been: "Why?

Is there anything different about summer compared to the other seasons? Since others have contributed answers, it is not fair to delete the question at this point that would also delete the answers! Instead, you should try to improve it - e. Why were on-topic comments deleted from this question? Add a comment.