Teamwork Makes the Ph.D. Work

Happy Sunday Funday! After my last blog post, a few people have asked me what my "Recipe for Success" is in balancing graduate school and my personal life. After giving it some thought, this picture from my regular rotation of desktop backgrounds pretty much sums up my equation: 

Ph.D. Success= Family + Flowers + Friends.

Family-My family keeps me grounded and motivated. I aim to achieve the same level of success as my parents and their unwavering support and love are my solid ground. I strive to set a positive example as the oldest and my siblings' strong #TeamMaria enthusiasm and constant comic relief keep me going.

Flowers-My flowers keep me optimistic and bright. I love keeping flowers in my home. They brighten my space and make me smile every time I walk by them. I like to keep a mix of faux and fresh flowers around so that I can have the benefits of the real ones but enjoy the no maintenance life of the faux ones.

Friends- My friends keep me laughing and focused. I am lucky to have so many friends who are equally ambitious across a multitude of disciplines and career paths. Whenever we get together, we have lots of laughs, ruthlessly competitive game nights, and discussions that can end in designing an experiment or a business plan. 

Teamwork Makes the Ph.D. Work

One of the things that makes getting a Ph.D. different from other graduate degrees is how individualized it is. Medical, law, seminary, and nursing students for example, go through the same classes and licensing exams together throughout their matriculation. In doctoral programs, however, even doctoral students in your same specialized research lab will be working on something very different form you. We take classes with other students but that is where the sameness ends. In a lot of ways, this can be a lonely process if you don't take advantage of social support networks. Even though we are part of a larger research community in our programs and active members of our lab's research team, your Ph.D. is what you make it. Whether it is seeking out opportunities to collaborate or a supportive sounding board, getting together regularly with others really helps to make the Ph.D. process manageable.

Accountability

Every Sunday evening, I have an accountability meeting with several other graduate students to keep our research progress on track. Each week we set goals for reading, writing, and professional development and write them into a Google Doc for everyone to see. We make sure that our weekly tasks are working towards accomplishing our semester and yearly goals. Research tasks are our focus to ensure that we make sure to prioritize these since our weeks can easily become overwhelmed with coursework, teaching, committee, clinical (for some), mentorship, and life tasks. Whenever we can't meet in person, we try to meet via Google hangouts to stay on top of our research goals. For me, this has been extremely helpful since I know I needed to work on prioritizing my research tasks and not letting my schedule get overwhelmed by other important tasks that did not further my research career. In my first blog post, I talked a little about how I let my research progress get further and further down on my to do list as I prioritized my health. This wasn't a bad thing per say but it did not help my research progress. Now that my health is more stable, I have been able to keep up with managing multiple research projects and I know these regular meetings have played a huge role in this productivity streak I have been and hope to stay on.

We're All in This Together

I would love to hear about how social support has helped you all! In the spirit of garnering social support networks, introduce yourself I would love to hear more about you! What are your social support networks like? Do you participate in any church or campus organizations that keep you grounded, motivated, and relieve your stress? Do you have a hobby related community that provides the same? The online planner community is one of my current favs! Are you currently in graduate school? Are you interested in applying one day? Let me know in the comments below!

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR WINNERS!!!

Bermetria Erskine

&

Natasha Grant

Send me an email with your address to {gradlifechic@gmail.com}

I will be shipping your Day Designer planner and other Target goodies this week!

I want to say a big

THANK YOU

to everyone who entered this giveaway!

Make sure to keep an eye out on the blog for more giveaways coming soon!

Restez Chic Toujours!

Organized Chic: Day Designer Review + Giveaway

It's the most wonderful time of the yeeeaarrr! Back to school time has always been my favorite time of the year. New pens! New sticky notes! New planners, OH MY!

To me, the most exciting part about the back to school grind is getting organized for the new academic year. As a PhD student, it's a bit different since during the summer we are still actively engaged in our research projects presenting at conferences, and even teaching summer courses. But the year brings back journal club meetings, teaching assistantships, our own coursework,  research assistants to manage and mentor, and any extracurricular activities. With the new semester just starting, I want to share with you the way I keep on top of all these different tasks: My Planner. 

The Contract

If you follow me on Instagram, you can tell I am a full on planner addict. It got so bad that for the 2014-2015 year, my best friend had me sign a contract that I would only use one planner for the year and if I purchased another one I would owe her $20 and she would produce an "I Told You So" music video. We had to rewrite the original note (in purple) because it was full of nonsense terms that gave me an out at every turn. Like a true best friend, she changed the wording to ensure I was actually held accountable if I broke the contract. This was the HARDEST year not to buy planners because so many new gorgeous ones came out and older ones were redesigned so beautifully! 

Sample Day in my Day Designer

I knew I wanted a daily planner because I like to schedule my to do list instead of just writing out a long list. For me, it ends up becoming more of a wish list of things I hope to maybe accomplish sometime in the near future. The original planner I chose was Emily Ley's Simplified Planner because I wanted to try the day on one page style and LOVE her inspiring and colorful products full of ideas for simplifying. But then I discovered the Day Designer by Whitney English and it was a total game changer. They are very similar in their layouts but as a #GoalGetter, I was especially attracted to the goal setting and branding worksheets at the beginning of Whitney's planner. I thought it was such perfect timing since, if you recall from my first post I was about to take a medical leave and was revamping my short-and-long-term goals. This planner allowed me to structure my days while I was on leave so that I stayed pretty active in the academic community and was extremely helpful during my first semester back in action.

Color Coded Goal Categories

As tempting as it was to buy ALL THE PLANNERS last year, I was extremely satisfied with my choice. The hard cover and gold corners protected the planner very well over the course of the year. It is such an amazing tool with your top 3 must do's for the day, a schedule on one side, a to do list on the other, and boxes to track deadlines, budgets, reminders, and dinner. As a psychology student, it was perfect to fill in my schedule with classes, scheduled research  participants and committee meetings.  I love to use the long list to track new tasks that pop up that day and the top 3 to prioritize my life. I use a different category for each box: 1)Research 2)Teaching 3)Life so that I can accomplish one item from each category. If you're interested, Whitney English still has some styles of the Academic Year edition available in the Day Designer Shop! 

CLICK HERE FOR $10 OFF!

For the 2015-2016 Academic Year, I decided to use the Erin Condren Life Planner for my everything planner. In case you are wondering why I chose a different planner after loving the Day Designer, don't worry it's all part of my plan! As a psychologist and planner addict, I am doing a longitudinal planner experiment where I try different ones each year and determine which is the best to fit my needs. I purchased the vertical layout because I wanted to have a side bar to keep all my general errands and to dos together for that week. This way I can use the different boxes each day to do time blocking for when I want to accomplish specific tasks like my reading and writing schedule, advisor meetings, or personal appointments. Not to mention this planner has such bright and happy colors that keep me inspired! Let me know in the comments below if you are interested in a more detailed post about how I am using the multiple sections of this planner to stay organized. I feel optimistic this will keep me organized and productive!

**GIVEAWAY TIME**

For my first giveaway on the blog, I want to share the planner love with you! 

TWO

 Winners will be chosen to receive a Day Designer for Target Weekly/Monthly Planner! 

These beauties have a hard cover, goal planning worksheets, a lined monthly calendar, and a weekly layout that features a daily top 3, hourly breakdown, and notes sections. 

**RULES & HOW TO ENTER** 

 To enter, follow me on Bloglovin',Instagram,Twitter, and Pinterest. 

Tag a friend on any social media outlet that would be interested in this giveaway. 

That's it!

**Optional Bonus Entry**

Leave a comment below on your favorite ways to get organized! 

This giveaway is open to all Domestic U.S. Residents.

This giveaway will run for one week and will end on September 7 at 11:59PM. 

The winner will be announced on September 9, 2015. 

Good luck to everyone!

Restez Chic Toujours!

 

---

*Post contains affiliate and referral links. All products pictured were purchased by me and all opinions are genuinely my own*

Back in Business

Happy 1st Day of July! There is nothing better than starting off a new month with fresh energy and new opportunities. 

It seems like its been years since I've updated my blog. I've missed you guys! Being back at work full time after my medical leave has been more of an adjustment period than I originally anticipated. It's exhausting but I am loving it!

The culture of my new  lab is exactly what I need to be productive. It is run on a "everyone-on-their-own-schedule" structure as opposed to a "strutured-on-a-set-of-lab-rules" one. Some people would be very anxious about being in my new setup because they require a mentor to provide more hands-on guidance on a regular basis whereas I love the flexibility to work when I work best (in the evenings) and can work it around physical therapy sessions for my tendinitis. A more structured lab culture does not work well for my anxiety levels or provide the things I need to be productive but others in that same environment would totally thrive. This is exactly why finding out about the lab culture before you join a research team is crucial. My new research area is something that I am extremely passionate about and honestly did not think I would be able to work on until after I was the Principal Investigator of my own research team because it is so different from my previous work. But I am SO excited about bringing my interest and experience with basic science memory research to help answer critical questions in social psychology and perception.

After my first week in my new lab, I started supervising an undergraduate student's summer research project. If you'll recall from my first blog post, I LIVE for mentoring students in the arts of research and have always wanted a summer student so I was beyond excited to be blessed with such a responsibility! Working with her the past few weeks has reminded me of the passion I have for research in general and also for the type of research that I do. I am sure you have heard before that you should choose a research area, or any career, in something you are truly passionate (I have gotten this same advice numerous times) but without it graduate school will be a miserable place. Between the long hours in the lab, hours spent outside the lab continuing research, teaching and grading papers, and the long process of getting a large research project off the ground are bearable and even exciting when you truly love what you are doing. I feel like this only became real to me when I realized how different it is just reading a research article about a project that I feel more personally invested in. It seems that I have been more productive in my first month here than in my last year working on a project that I was interested in but not passionate about.

Restez Chic Toujours!