My First-Year Metaphorical Toolkit

By Gabbi Figueroa

So, you want to know how my first year of graduate school went and my main takeaways? Well…if you insist! I would love to share a reflection on my first year as a PhD student in social and personality psychology and hopefully provide some helpful tools that I discovered along the way. 

Entering this program, I knew the kind of PhD student I wanted to be. Confident,determined, well-rounded, excited, joyful, and involved in as many aspects of research and mentorship as possible. However, for this to be possible, I was losing myself outside of work and school. Not because I was not enjoying my work, but rather I was stretching myself too thin to be able to be fully present for all my aspirations. Thus, inducted into my first-year metaphorical toolkit is tool #1: I had to get out of my own way. 

I felt all of this building pressure placed on me by myself because I was trying to be the graduate student I thought I should be instead of being the graduate student and person I actually am. Getting out of my own way involved shifting the way I think about my work and how I show up for my research, coworkers, and students. Every day is an opportunity to grow and learn as opposed to an obligation to be checked off. I see tool #1 as a lifestyle where I get out of my own way to be present in my life as opposed to locked away in my head. 

This takes me to tool #2: comprehension over completion. Moving from my bachelor’s degree to my doctorate was not as seamless as I anticipated due to a major shift in perspective that was required. It is integral to understand the difference between completion and comprehension to be successful in graduate level learning. As an undergraduate student, most courses are tailored to present information for students to memorize and understand with some application (thinking of Bloom’s Taxonomy for learning). With this comes assignments meant to be completed and comprehended to the degree of submitting a stellar product, but never necessarily needing to comprehend the reasoning behind the assignment in the first place. 

Comprehension over completion is a recent discovery for me when I was tasked with presenting my first-year project at our subject area research seminar. While rehearsing my talk, I found myself attempting to remember the paces and topics of my talk as though I was preparing to act on a stage as opposed to having a conversation with my audience. One of the keys to a great talk is confidence, and a major aspect of confidence comes from knowing the material inside and out. Once I shifted from memorization to comprehension of why I was saying what I was saying, there was a click in my mind that put a lot of puzzle pieces into place. I did know what I was talking about because it was my project, and I was not only remembering what I needed to say because of repetition but because I knew it inside and out. Now, as I move through my courses and daily responsibilities, I am driven by a need for comprehension as opposed to the undergraduate mindset of completion.

Which brings me to the tool #3: I need to trust in myself and my abilities. The number of times I have been anxious about assignments and deadlines is beyond measure because it began long before graduate school. My body has tended to react to stress in similar ways with body aches, tense muscles, and headaches throughout my life. However, it was this whole first year of graduate school that helped me understand that life is worth living beyond getting things done and always looking toward the horizon. Life in graduate school and academia is different from undergraduate where every semester you are building upon the last to improve methods, continue writing manuscripts, and polish your breadth of knowledge. If I want to be an academic for the rest of my life, I do not want to live it with tense shoulders and body aches wondering when my respite will come. I continue to learn how to trust in myself and my abilities to get things done and become my own personal respite. I know myself, and I need to trust that I will not slack on what needs to be done. So, stressing about my deadlines before falling asleep will not get the work done any faster (might still be working on this one!)

A lot of my tools and learning were discovered outside of the office and classroom this first year as a PhD student. This was certainly not what I was expecting. However, I believe that fostering introspection through these Aggie Voice blog posts and taking time to analyze my inner state throughout has made me a stronger student and person. 

I hope that these tools in my metaphorical toolkit can help you begin to recognize your own tools you have gathered along your academic journey! What is the main tool you will carry with you into the summer or next academic venture?