1、Chapter 1: The Realities of Graduate Study IntroductionEducation has really one basic factor,a sine qua nonone must want it.George Edward WoodberryTo begin to discuss the realities of graduate study and the related issue of writing personal statements, I put to you three cases:Case 1: A student appl
2、ies to graduate school simply because hes not sure what else to do with his life. As he naively writes in his personal statement when defining his long-term goals: “Im open to limitless possibilities!”Case 2: A student plagiarizes material in a graduate application essay, reasoning that the same rul
3、es of citation that applied in college papers are not relevant, and that no one would bother checking her source anyway.Case 3: A 4.0 student competes for and wins a national scholarship, attends graduate school for one semester, then drops out. He relishes the spirit of competition in winning the s
4、cholarship, but finds graduate school to be more unfriendly and less fulfilling than he expects.As a writing tutor who has worked with thousands of students on their graduate applications, I have witnessed variations of all three of these cases. Saddest and worst of all, at least to my lights, is th
5、e disappointment posed by Case 3. Students who accept national scholarships are literally taking someone elses seat from them, and the idea that they would then drop a scholarship that could have gone to someone else could be viewed as unconscionable.Unifying all these cases is one guiding principle
6、 and a key reason why graduate schools and scholarship committees ask students for personal essays in the first place: self-definition. What youre really asked to do in writing a personal essay is to define yourself: your motivations, your conscience, your aptitude, your history, your commitment, yo
7、ur confidence, your responsibility, your decision-makingin other words, your personal ethic. Any discussion of writing in relation to personal statements begins best with a consideration of guided self-reflection, self-motivation, and ethics. Grounded in these principles, this chapter will help you
8、to consider whether or not graduate study is right for you.Self-Reflection and Graduate SchoolBefore even beginning the application process, you must consider your reasoning for attending graduate school. Here are some commonly cited reasons, good and bad: Grad school is a great way to put off havin
9、g to deal with the real world. The job market is bad right now, but by the time I finish my degree it will be better. Others have been telling me I should go to grad school because I had good grades as an undergrad. My parents went to grad school, so I should too. If I dont go to grad school, Ill ha
10、ve to move back home. A graduate degree will guarantee me more money in a future job. I have no job offers, but a decent GPA. I enjoy teaching and research, and grad school is an opportunity to do both. Grad school is a great way to start over with my emotional life, especially since I just got dump
11、ed. Having a PhD would give me greater status and more self-worth. My work experience so far has been uninspiring, and I want to explore new opportunities that would come with a higher degree. Ive applied for and received a scholarship, so I owe it to others to accept and use it. Its a sanctioned an
12、d convenient way to defer my student loans. Quite simply, I love learning.Its easier to pass judgment on some of these reasons than others, but all are used regularly, and the most important realization about them is this: Even the worst of reasons doesnt guarantee failure in grad school, just as ev
13、en the best of reasons doesnt guarantee success. Those who succeed in graduate school tend to have a dogged work ethic matched to an ambitious vision and a strong sense of obligation to self, while those who do not succeed tend to spend much of their emotional time questioning their own sense of val
14、ue and purpose in the process. Because of the personal and professional challenges that come hand in hand with graduate education, all grad students experience concentrated periods of self-assessment, and responsible students begin that assessment even before they apply.The Culture of Graduate Study
15、Every graduate department probably has onesomeone you hear about and maybe even witness in your first year of study. Someone who lives on coffee and cigarettes and socializes vigorously, perhaps even earning a storied nickname such as “the Professor” or “Rasputin.” Or someone who is reclusive and ra
16、rely seen, spiriting around the hallways or labs mostly at night, writing secret little notes that are crumbled and quickly stuffed into trouser pockets as you walk by. What these someones have in common is that they are graduate students (perhaps only allegedly) who are endlessly working on their d
17、issertations.Theres an old joke about a student being admonished by his professor: “No, Im afraid students cant get tenure.” Some grad students hang around long enough that they dont seem to get that joke. They receive several extensions on their dissertations, perhaps even get part-time university-
18、supported work teaching or doing lab research, and yet they never seem to finish what they claim is a legitimate and active dissertation, and instead become the stuff of puzzled ridicule and whispered legend.How can such a thing happen? Quite simple: In graduate school, you are responsible for your
19、own education. Hence, you can manage it well or you can squander it. Although graduate programs certainly do push their students along and support them, they also include a great number of hurdles than can be difficult to clear. Some sobering realities about graduate education follow: It typically t
20、akes 2-3 years to complete a masters degree and 5-6 to complete a PhD, and for some students it takes longer. During your graduate study, your sources of funding from the school may change from year to year and sometimes might even be in jeopardy. By comparison to undergraduate study, there is far l
21、ess attention to grades and far more emphasis on a long-term, meaningful, publishable project. Despite less emphasis on grades, some grad students do fail their comprehensive exams and are ejected from their programs. Your relationship with your advisor is one of the most important in your life, wit
22、h all the paradoxical trappings that can come with complex relationships: mentorship, competition, collegiality, distrust, empathy, partnership, unfairness, kindness, acquiescence, and even break-up. Your teaching assistantship may throw you to the lions and expect you to teach your own class with v
23、irtually no supervision, or you may spend much of your assistantship fighting with the Xerox machine and processing grades from a class of hundreds of students. Often, your advisor is struggling to get tenure just as you are struggling to probe relevant literature or gather data. The two struggles d
24、ont necessarily coalesce, and yours is readily viewed as the less meaningful one. If youre attending grad school on a university or national scholarship, you may be looked at with some suspicion by your peers and the faculty, or you may be held in higher regard than others, with elevated expectation
25、s. When you reach the dissertation stage, you may spend a year or two gathering data about a bad hypothesis, or you may write a chapter or two and be told by your committee that you must throw them out. Your living circumstances may be very different from what you experienced as an undergraduate, in
26、volving a sprawling city or a lonely little Podunk built around the university. Your peers in graduate school may range in age from 21 to 50+, with diverse experiences that include marriages, divorces, children, multiple degrees, work in industry, publications, international travel, or a series of f
27、ailures or successes beyond any that youve ever experienced. These peers become your social world and often your only support network.Certainly, the picture is not always as grim as this, and many students relish their time in graduate schoolin fact, some call it the best time of their lives, especi
28、ally those who attend graduate school after some unsatisfying time away from education. However, there is also plenty of evidence to back up the argument that things go poorly for many. One 2004 article from The Chronicle of Higher Education suggests that 40-50 percent of students who enter PhD prog
29、rams do not finish.To explain these numbers, despite the absence of national studies on the problem, research from institution-specific studies still reveals some noteworthy trends: Women drop out at a higher rate than men. Minority students leave at a higher rate than white students do. Americans d
30、rop out more often than international students. Students leave humanities and social-science programs at a higher rate than those in the sciences.Considering these disappointing trends, one would think that graduate scholarship winners dont fall into these patterns. But, according to The Chronicle o
31、f Higher Education article cited above, even scholars who are awarded graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation finish their PhD programs at about a rate of 75 percent, which is only slightly higher than for other science students in doctoral programs.The purpose behind pres
32、enting these realities, of course, is both to help inform your decision-making process and to help you consider, if after serious self-reflection you decide graduate education is for you, the most effective way to compose your personal statements and other application materials. Being more informed
33、about the culture of graduate study will both help you be more prepared and help you to be taken more seriously as you apply.Student Writing and EthicsImagine having to type and sign your name under this (redundant) sentence at the end of your personal statement:I certify that this essay is original
34、 work prepared by me, the author.Well, you need not imagine itmany scholarship and grad school applications include just such a statement for you to sign. Though it may seem almost absurd, by definition, that a students personal statement would need to be endorsed as being personal and original, gro
35、wing concerns about academic integrity have made such a testimony necessary in the eyes of many.The evidence that many students cheat in college is overwhelming. There are popular “self-help” handbooks published on the subject, and a growing number of classes in high school and college where teacher
36、s ban cell phones so that students cant text message test answers to each other (there are other good reasons to ban cells in classes, too). As cited in the article “Educators blame Internet for rise in student cheating“ in The Seattle Times, one survey of 70,000 students conducted by the Center for
37、 Academic Integrity at Duke University found that 95 percent of high school and college students “admit to some form of academic cheating”. Other surveys report far less shocking but equally troubling results, usually settling on figures of about 50 percent of students who note that they have partic
38、ipated at least once in academic cheating.Given the temptation and habit built into a culture where many students do cheat, and given the high stakes involved when applying for a scholarship or to grad school, it is not unreasonable to think that some students practice some form of cheating even in
39、their personal statements. In this context, unethical practices range from exaggeration to poor source citation to outright plagiarism.Lies, Exaggerations, and “Creative Truths”One of the most famous cases of lies in a personal essay, which eventually led to a lawsuit by the writer of the essay, was
40、 in the news in 1998 (see the article “Judge Vindicates Princeton/School Blew Whistle on Lying Student“). Princeton University alerted the medical schools one of its graduates had applied to that he had made false claims in his personal statement. The graduate and would-be doctor then sued Princeton
41、, but the judge threw out the case after testimony was over and before the case had gone to jury. During the course of the trial, the graduate admitted to telling several lies and “creative truths” in his application. In his personal statement, he misidentified his race, lied about winning a prestigious scholarship, and falsely claimed that “a family of lepers had donated half their beggings” to support his dream. (This last claim is particularly creative, in that it is highly difficult and
