How did you survive grad school?

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I understand for some people, undergrad (with its many group projects, group activities, group presentations) was not fun...or it was really lonely.

What was different about grad school? How did you make it through the long program? What was your support system that kept you going?


***I got a wonderful number of replies to my question "how many aspies have graduate degrees." It seems there are many.


***Plus, I think it can't hurt if we have one more topic on how awsome aspies can be and how they can achieve so much, instead of adding one more topic to the list of how AS holds people back or creates issues. We should celebrate people's successes.

I only did an M.S. and it only took two years....not really so long at all. I did it right out of undergrad, and I was young enough for it to still feel like undergrad. Actually I was in a B.S./M.S. program so one just ran into the other......and I could take grad level courses for undergrad credit and grad credit. I got a full time job as soon as I got my B.S. and I worked there pretty much through grad school. I lived in the same appartment with the same roomates who were still undergrads....It was really no different than undergrad....and I graduated whenI was 21, so really I still felt like a college kid. Leaving school was probably the hardest thing for me......I missed that place so much. I suppose we don't do well with change......hence why I didn't even want to graduate with my B.S. when it was time too (I was only 19 anyway).

Here's why we are awsome....I graduated college at 19 and grad school at 21, worked as an auto mechanic, research assistant, and a bartender.

Thanks for the great questions, Northern_Light_Girl!

I wasn't able to attend graduate school until five years after I finished college. I was motivated to finally get my degree that would then lead to a job (which I started two weeks after I finished the coursework). I did very well in grad school, much better than in undergrad. Why? Because I was studying my long-time area of special interest, I knew a lot about the subject. For about the first time in my life I was one of the "smart ones" and that was great. I found that if I kept on top of the reading assignments and papers, I did well, and there was still time to party on the weekends!

Z

I'm currently in grad school, so I can't say how I did survive it (or whether I will for that matter ), but I can tell you why it's a hundred times better than my undergraduate experience was.

Everybody who is here wants to be here and actually cares about what they're studying; no longer am I surrounded by people who went to college mostly for the purpose of partying or just because they're "supposed to" go to college and get their B.A. or whatever. Occasionally I even have actual conversations with other students in my department about things that both of us are interested in, and I don't find myself panicking for lack of things to say.

Once or twice a semester there's some sort of conference or other event, enough to make me feel like I have a social life without being overwhelming. Most of the students have their priorities in an order similar to mine - i.e. research comes first, other work when necessary, usually talk about research even when doing things ostensibly social - so it's much less easy to be labeled "weird" or "antisocial". People understand if you sort of "drop off the face of the earth" while working on papers during the last few weeks of the semester.

...Okay, well, maybe most of this is just me being thrilled to find anyone who actually cares about academic things at all after spending the first twenty years of my life in a place where anti-intellectualism was practically compulsory.

I can't really speak for any "support system" within the graduate school itself other than that. I don't receive any accommodations, and I shudder to think what asking for them would be like; the health/support services office here is tiny, underfunded, understaffed, and generally useless. (I had a terrible experience once when I went there hoping to get antibiotics for a sinus infection. I don't even want to think about asking anything more complicated than that.)

Outside of school-based resources, what I'm most grateful for is my father's distant but unfailing moral support. Er, and his keeping me on his health insurance policy, which means I at least manage to see the dentist once a year.

Is grad school university?

I was thinking of grade school (elementary school). But nope I never went to graduate school.

I want to go to graduate school - however I find that since I graduated from university with my Bachelor's, I've pretty much left my field of study alone and done nothing but music. Language was a special interest of mine, and my area of study, but it's not a special interest anymore. I want to just do music the rest of my life, and there's no need to go to any sort of school for that - while others are in the classroom, I am practicing, getting better than them, and taking their next opportunities from them.

A fancy piece of paper does not make you a good musician. Being a good musician makes you a good musician - and when you're trying to get a job or a gig or whatever, a degree will do nothing for you, when the next guy who goes in has no degree but blows you out of the water musically.

I just finished two master's programs.

They were each a bit different, one had more people per class and was less focused on long papers than the other, one was predominantly male, the other overwhelmingly female.

It thus makes a big difference what subject it's in, but there are a few observations on some commonalities..

1 You get to know people better and vice-versa even going at an AS pace. This is due to the fact that you will have multiple classes with the most of the same people even if you make no effort to do so.

This is because there are a limited number of people in the program and few courses to take in each area each semester. If you are specializing in say....a particular historical period, everyone studying that period will pick most of the same 1-2 courses every semester, and since many grad students are in programs for a while they are likely to overlap with you at least a few semesters (the order in which courses are taken is less prescribed than for undergrads in most cases).

If there are core classes shared by multiple specializations, this will happen in two stages, you will have multiple classes with people trying to take all the core classes at once when you start, but later only see people in the same specialization as you.

This goes for professors too. You may take 3 courses with a professor even if he isn't your adviser, just because there are only 1-2 faculty members teaching certain kinds of courses. This goes double if you went to the same place for undergrad and already know some of them.

2. People are at a different stage of life. Even putting aside the people in their thirties, forties, or even past retirement, people in their mid-20s are different from most undergrads.

A high proportion of people will be married, engaged, or nearly so, and this changes things substantially (I was friends with one person barely older than me already on her second husband!). For some reason I found such people were more likely to start conversations with me, this could be a maturity thing, but I always suspected it had more to due with them no longer seeing themselves as "available" and thus not avoiding talking to guys on the grounds of letting them take initiative. They are however generally (but not always) looking for platonic friendships only, and don't be too quick to assume otherwise.

3. Night classes. Again I think this is subject dependent (subjects that presume a concurrent internship are often nearly all night or evening classes), so your sleep schedule will likely change compared to undergrad. Since readings are heavier and projects bigger and less frequent in most subjects, all-nighters are more frequently necessary (or maybe I just procrastinate a lot).

Another effect of a night class is that most people will leave the campus immediately afterwards
(they don't generally live in dorms), this means that if you take the main form of public transit, you will see a lot of your classmates on the way home, which provides a very good social opportunity.

Many if not most NTs will start conversations with people they recognize from class but have never spoken too if they are sitting across from them on a bus or train. This has happened to me many times with many people and is almost always worthwhile. The exception is when they have another friend keeping them fully occupied, in which case they have to already know you to include you in the conversation. However one of the two will likely miss one class or another affording an opportunity to for the other circumstance to arise and give you entry into the group.

4. Classes are also usually only once, rather than 2-3 times, per week. They run from 2:30-2:45 minutes depending on the program and subject. A professor may consistently let you out much earlier, but this is highly variable. Professors may also cancel or reschedule classes more often than otherwise.

5. Talking in class. The responsibility to speak is proportionate to class size. A class of 30 is like an undergrad course of the same size, a handful of people do 90% of the talking (and sometimes resent most of the rest for leaving them to do so). In smaller classes (6-12) many try to speak at least once every class. This is why doing the reading is more important.

In a humanities subject, you will also find that there is either no lecture component or only a third of the class. Many professors will also assign their own books, and the same books may be used by multiple courses.

6. Adviser's actually matter!! ! I didn't consult mine enough and regret it. They can actually help make the difference as to whether you are in a position to actually get a job on graduation, which you should be thinking about well in advance. You cannot change your academic record in retrospect and have to be making yourself employable.

I think this is my longest post ever