workspace: august 18th, 2020, 9:35 AM 

used my lunch break yesterday to graduate from my masters, i.e. walking over to uni & into the grad office, showing photo id and then being given this and told “uhhh.... congratulations” (because i’m graduating out of session & don’t want to wait til july for a ceremony since i technically had enough credit to do this last july or last december)

it’s the 4th version of the first draft of my paper but most of the hard work is done so now I’m waiting on my co-authors to tear me to shreds lol

oh well

Ah yes, August - the month equivalent Sunday for academics. A lot of my friends are starting their applications and realising they don’t actually know where to start, so here’s the advice I’ve been giving them.

(also i’m no expert i’m just a lady who did this last year)

1. Make a list: So much of my advice for applying to grad school involves lists, and the very first one to make is a list of the schools where you might want to go. In the end, you might not apply to all of them, but it is just a place to start. For each school you are interested in, write down all of the requirements and what documents each school requires you submit. This is important because some schools require a proposal and a personal statement, some require one or the other, and some require you to combine both into one page. Include links to the instructions each school provides for each component that you have to write!

2. Write your longest proposal first: This is easier said then done, but writing the longest proposal (in my experience it was 2 pages) allowed me to have a base to work from for all the rest. Then, for each school, you can take the parts you need for that application and just add the specific things each school needs. If you’re applying for your MA in Canada, your longest proposal will probably be you SSHRC CGS-M proposal, which is conveniently due the earliest as well.

3. Be cognisant of (fake) deadlines: These deadlines will seem like they are a million years away, but they’ll sneak up on you. Specifically, there is a rule of thumb that you should allow a potential reference a month of time to write you a letter, so write that deadline down. By that date, over a month before your deadline, you should have something resembling a proposal to send to your potential references. 

4. Workshops at your uni: Likely, your university will have a lot of faculty-wide as well as department-wide workshops for applying to your Masters and related funding. They’re definitely useful (especially the department-specific ones) but do not wait for them to start your stuff. For instance, one of the workshops I attended was set a week before the deadline of a major funding opportunity, which would be essentially useless if I hadn’t already known about the scholarship.

5. Find a mentor: Ideally a professor or upper-level graduate student who knows the insides and outsides of your country’s system of graduate school. My mentor was a professor of mine (also a reference) and she was full of useful information because she chaired my university’s graduate funding committee. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from professors, especially regarding your proposal. The worst thing they can say is no. 

gRad school, Weeks 11-14.