Taking the lead- enhancing your grad school career with leadership roles

Serina Taluja

Graduate school is hard enough as it is, and yet we are constantly badgered to take on external roles to our schooling/research, whether it’s through a chapter of a national organization on campus, or through a student organization, or our own grad student association! Sometimes it seems like we’re getting pulled in a million different directions- but here’s why it’s important to take on at least one or two leadership roles external to your job day-to-day in pursuit of your degree.

Simply put- it’s healthy to do something different.

Hard work is not something grad students are unfamiliar with, especially highly focused hard work. You spend years of your life at the edge of our knowledge of a specific field, which can be so fun but also a little… limiting. Taking on roles that push you out of your office, or out of the lab, can be a healthy break from the research you otherwise spend countless hours on, and can free up some of the mental space you might need to generate new and interesting ideas that will eventually push your research forward.

You might find something you really like!

Trying out a role you’re not familiar with might teach you something about yourself. Maybe your student organization is looking for a secretary, and you discover a new way to organize meeting minutes that changes the way you organize your data! Or maybe you’ve never been very good at public speaking, but your grad student association really needs a representative to attend a meeting where you’ll have to talk about the needs of the students, so you volunteer in order to further a skill set you’re lacking in! There are countless ways to be involved that will help those around you AND help you grow as a person and a professional.

Finally- think of it as an opportunity, not an obligation.

Being involved can have a really negative connotation- “involved” sounds like “busy”, which is not always the same thing as “productive”. Having more work to do than you already have in grad school can be intimidating, and it can blind us to the fact that leadership roles are a chance to show off the skills we have, AND build up the ones we need to improve! Rather than looking at these roles as “extra work” or something we “have to do”, it’s important to try to frame it as something that will let you help out your community while also networking, learning, and growing (and adding things to your CV, of course!).

My final plug for being involved, and a leader as a grad student- there are at least a handful of other people who will graduate with the same degree as you, around the same time. If you’re looking to stand out from the crowd- having held leadership roles is what’s going to differentiate you as a job candidate from everyone else with the same degree as you. So I’ll say it again: opportunity, not obligation!!