It's very easy for graduate students to get wrapped up in their work and let taking care of themselves go. Forgetting to eat lunch because you were too busy reading or writing can be just the tip of the iceberg.
Check through some of these links for general advice on staying well during your studies:
- Career coach Jennifer Polk shares some of her observations about some challenges grad students routinely face.
- The American Psychological Association also provides some valuable resources about mental health and wellness specifically directed to graduate students. You might want to begin with "Self-care is not just for emergencies" (2011), and then check out the resources gathered in the Mentoring & Self Care page.
- GradHacker is written by graduate students, which means that the blog has a number of articles about and by graduate students with learning and physical disabilities. For students with dyslexia, there is also the The Dyslexic Grad Student's Toolbox.
- We have also gathered a short list of resources for (supporting) black and minority colleagues and students here on the blog that you can find in this post, "How To Support Blacademics & Be an Ally" (8 July 2016).
Here are some more specific links connected to wellness and writing -- which is such a big part of grad school. It is also often a key source of anxiety for grad students, and often leads to physical health problems associated with sitting at a computer for long hours. In addition to our page on Writing Tips, here is some writing-centred advice:
- Perfectionist gridlock is a problem that many of us face throughout our degrees. Grad Logic offers 8 ways to Get Unstuck.
- General writer's block is also a common problem. Check out Academic Muse's post, Writing Too Slowly? The Reason Why and What You Can Do and Gradhacker's post on Pushing Past Writing Blocks.
- Ashley Sanders discusses how and why to organize Writing Boot Camps as a way to break out of the isolation of writing and develop a community of support, and accountability to your time-lines. This post also provides links to get you started.
- Your health care coverage. Students -- especially those who are part of labour unions for teaching or research assistant positions -- are often covered for a range of health care benefits. If you have access to subsidized care for things like massage, chiropractic, or physical therapy, take advantage of it to help ease or correct the physical tensions your body takes on from long hours in front of a computer screen.
- If you are a university employee by virtue of your studies, you might also have access to ergonomic training or work-station modification through your university's office of Occupational Health and Safety.
Negotiating the challenges of field work. As anthropologists, graduate students can also face unique wellness challenges as fieldworkers -- many of which are well-known by your mentors and senior students, but are often little discussed.
- Savage Minds has posted some interesting pieces on mental health during fieldwork: "Participant Observation and PTSD" (2016) and "Affect, Attention, and Ethnographic Research: Thoughts on Mental Health in the Field" (2016).
- You might also want to read Amy Pollard's "Field of screams: difficulty and ethnographic fieldwork" (Anthropology Matters, 2009) based on qualitative research with PhD anthropologists at three universities in the UK.
Funding is a big issue for most grad students. Here are a few selected resources to help you manage your money and pursue self-care on a budget.
- Check out this amazing wiki "How to Prep for Grad School if You're Poor." The original author began the page as a Google Doc and has moved it over to a wiki as "more stable, and easily navigated resource for students (M.As, M.F.As, and P.h.Ds) who are attending grad school and are poor or working class." The page covers a wide range of key issue that grad students struggle with from applying to childcare, cultural and social capital, and self care. This advice comes from current and former grad students, so you can trust that they know what they're talking about.
- You may also want to check out "What I Wish I Knew in Grad School: Current and Former Students Share 16 Tips" (PsychCentral).
- Feeding yourself healthy meals when both money and time are tight can be tricky. For tips, recipes, and inspiration, check out Leanne Brown's (free!) downloadable cookbooks. Her Good and Cheap book is actually a project that came out of Brown's Masters in food studies at NYU -- which is pretty awesome.
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If you have any resources for graduate students that would add to this page, we would love to hear from you. Contact the team at anthro everywhere! by email or tweet us @anthrolens
Last updated: 2 June 2017
