 Welcome to the University of Michigan student-to-student discussion today and we're really pleased to have you join us. My name is Paula Wishart and I work here at Reckham Graduate School and I'll be moderating the panel today. Joining me today are six current Michigan students who will share their insights with you on the transition to U of M. Also joining is Natalie Bartolacci who will be moderating the questions you send us online and you can send a question anytime and let me let Natalie introduce herself. Hi, I'm Natalie Bartolacci and I head up the student development area here at Reckham Graduate School. We're really pleased to have you join us today and we hope to see many of you at Reckham's fall welcome and information fair on August 29th. A little plug there. I also want to add that we held a discussion like this earlier this summer for international students and a recording of that conversation is also available. So we're going to begin with an opening question and for this opening question we're going to ask the students to introduce them themselves and share their perspectives on this question. And from there we'll continue with the questions that we have here and the questions that you send us live. Okay, so let's start. When you think about your first week here at U of M, what were the things you remember most? I'm Kyle Southern. I'm a third year doctoral student in the higher education program here at Michigan and I'm originally from North Carolina and thinking about those first few days and weeks on campus what kind of strikes me is that I've been working for several years after my master's program and then coming here kind of to adjust back into being a student. I was a bit of a transition and I was very used to kind of going home at five or six or seven o'clock and not having to worry about work anymore but coming to graduate school you're in class or doing meetings until today and then nighttime is a really good time to do reading and preparation for the next day so adjusting to that was definitely a transition but also was trying to take care of the practical side of life. So where was I going to get my groceries or where I'm going to go to the bank, where I wear my haircut, all those kinds of things. And so it was good to speak with my colleagues, with other students who were a few years ahead of me, with faculty and other folks who were close to me in the School of Education to get ideas on where to take care of those things and so that was a process for me in navigating both the transition to academic life but also the life in Ann Arbor. My name is Chukuka Mvagu and I usually go by Chuki. I'm a rising third year student in aerospace engineering and I come from California, Riverside, California. I think one of the things that really stuck in my memory the first weeks that I came to admissions campus was just the amount of people that were here. It was such a lively environment when I stepped on the campus because from my previous institution this school is actually four times bigger and at first I can kind of seem somewhat intimidating but it was really great to see a lot of people just out and about, see the great sports culture for the homecoming games and things like that. So it was a really good experience, different experience for me but something that kind of expanded my horizons a little bit. My name is Miguel, I'm from Mexico, I'm a second year master in public policy at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and when I arrived to Ann Arbor it was surprising for me to find a really warm weather. I was expecting a dry place or I don't know like I wasn't expecting like feeling in the jungle and feeling hot and that there is a lot of nature and that so many places were incredible when I arrived in August and I think the weather will be pretty similar this year and yeah that was like the great memory that I have from Ann Arbor, finding something really unspectable for the first week. Hi, my name is Christy Russell and I'm from Louisville, Kentucky. I am a fourth year doctorate of pharmacy student and what I remember most about coming or the first few weeks being here at U of M was when it was busy because I was trying to transition back into school and going to classes, taking quizzes because we had quizzes in the first week of my program but also just all the events that were going on that allowed me to get to know people on campus as well as the people in my program so just getting to know my classmates and building new relationships and friendships. My name is Katie. I'm a rising fourth year in the Screen Arts and Cultures PhD program and what I remember most from my first year or first couple of weeks here is I was actually a Michigan undergrad so I was expecting to come back to the campus and have like full mastery. I remember coming back and everything was different like there were new buildings, there were new people, there were new offices to go to and feeling really disoriented when I was ready to feel very confident and I wish that I would have taken time to figure out where my classes were before the first day because they were in a whole new building and I had no idea where I was going. Hi everybody, I'm Supraja and I'm from India. I'm a master's student in the financial engineering program and the next semester is going to be my final semester. The first few weeks that I came to University of Michigan, the biggest feeling was I kind of felt lost because I was here by the month of June which is like pretty early and there are not many students around campus. It's a huge campus and you have to find your way. So every turn I took, I forgot which route I took so I would like stop everybody on the way and ask them. Nobody would know but there'd be kind enough to like stop and like use their smartphones and Google Maps and direct me in the right way because I did not have a smartphone. That was very helpful. That's the biggest thing I remember. And the first few weeks I did not have housing so that was a big worry for me at that time but I did manage to find housing and the thing is I got to know a lot of people who still did not have housing so it's not like if you don't have housing you don't need to panic is what I realized at that point. You have choices. It's not like you're going to be stuck in a really bad place. So that was one thing and then since I'm an international student never have been away from home, stayed at home all my life. So this was kind of like being alone for the first time. It was nice but I was homesick as well a bit. And then meeting so many people from so many different countries it felt like oh my god this is why I came to University of Michigan to experience the diversity and it's here in Michigan. You've heard of some of the things about making that transition logistically that first week. What sort of advice would any of you offer about that arrival on campus? I definitely have a couple things. Housing was also mentioned just earlier and I think that for all students it's really important to get that done early depending on your department's admissions process and cycle you know you can gain your admission and ultimately make your decision you know anywhere from April or later so sometimes I can create some anxiety in terms of whether or not you'll be able to find housing but the University provides a lot of resources in terms of matching you with roommates and housing and finding things like that so I think just getting that started on that process really early is important and if you're able to visit the campus before you you know you come here in the fall I think that's really helpful in terms of seeing the place that you're going to be living in or just familiarizing yourself with your classrooms, your department, all of those things so just being able to figure out housing or getting an early start you really don't want to push that too late but even so there's a lot of resources for you to kind of get that done. I definitely agree with that and I also thought it was valuable I got here just a little bit before classes started and had a few days without too much on my schedule it was helpful to just kind of walk around downtown just kind of see where things were learn kind of the grid what are the major streets just kind of get landmarks on not only kind of practical things but also restaurants are interesting things that look like I want to check them out. Yeah I would like to just add on to this before you arrive at University of Michigan it would be nice to get in touch with your fellow students because you would learn a lot of unexpected small things that you would be you know you would arrive and then you'd find out it'd be a surprise but if you like get in touch with your fellow students they would like mention small things like housing these apartments are these apartments are not good maybe you can choose another one so small stuff which you would not realize but to help you out that would be one thing. What are some other resources so getting in touch with your fellow students you would sort of hinting towards some helpful resources what sort of things do you think would be good to check out ahead of time. Yeah definitely in terms of housing there's Northwood Housing website that helps put you in contact with other Northwood students there's also the University of Michigan off-campus housing website which I have found particularly useful I discovered it late so I think this is great that you guys would hope we get a kind of advanced notice of this resource because it's really good allows you to kind of identify and select you know your particular price range neighborhood that you want to live in roommates that you you know whether it's up to two three or four roommates things like that so that's really helpful in terms of I would say that in terms of off-campus housing a lot of Ann Arbor leases are for a year but a lot of times undergraduate students or even graduate students are away on fellowship or they're studying abroad so there's often short-term sublets that you can get for a month or two that would give you the chance to sort of move in at least partially and then find out what neighborhood you wanted I know a lot of people who successfully taken a short-term sublet and then moved into like a forever home a little bit later if they didn't know the city as well and a lot of times those are posted on the off-campus housing website so there are university students that could give you further advice sure we can provide after the broadcast links on a website for you guys to go check it out so do you guys want to give any thoughts on the different parts of campus sort of how the campus is broken up well like there are three campuses one in the north another in the center of Ann Arbor another in the south in my case most of my classes are in the central campus but I live in the north campus I have to take one of the buses from the university there are two major buses systems in Ann Arbor one is provided by the university and that is provided by the city both of them are free but in the university buses you don't have to identify yourself anyone can't take the bus without paying a lot for it so I have to take a bus that it's only like 15 minutes or 20 minutes from the place that I take classes many people in Ann Arbor say oh that's too that's a really big distance you are crazy you're living in the north campus and you are taking most of the class in the central campus but yeah I mean it's a crazy distance for Ann Arbor but in most of the big cities in the US that incredible deal one one bus and 20 minutes of ride so those are those are like the the main divisions and I would suggest in case you are going to take most of your classes in one of the of the campuses that you look something of housing around those places just to make it easier but actually it's not a big deal even if you live far from it that's insane a lot of we talked a lot about housing so we didn't talk about getting to where we need to be so getting home and getting to our classes are getting to the live library so I think it's always a good deal to look at that bus route figure out how you're going to get from your house to class ahead of time and also if you want to drive like looking up how to get a parking pass ahead of time because parking can be a challenge on campus and if you don't want to be late to classes then it's good to know where you can park ahead of time yeah I just like to add on to her statement reasons parking sometimes some my classmates they take cars they park like a mile away and walk which does not make sense so it's better to take the you know the public transport or the U-mich bus buses especially during winters it would be better to just take buses then you know risk having a ski or something like that and they are very frequent is what I like that even the city buses during the week days a pretty freak frequency and as Miguel said that both buses are free for the but but for the city bus if you have an m-card you just need to swipe and it's free for the university buses you don't need m cards even anybody is allowed on the bus so yeah your m-card your ID card yeah that's a good advice when you're right or not we'll go to get your m-card does anyone have a card right I have mine right here I was thinking carbon that things are showing your car that's the m-card yes so yeah I do have a car that's okay that is great that is the m-card yeah it'll get you into performances or just yeah you get this guns with this God and library card yeah you can take and I know this like right in between but there's like this free bus service to Detroit downtown Detroit even that you can access using the m-card you just need to swipe and the riders you can go down into downtown Detroit look around and then come back by the same bus use the m-card it's free yeah I did get a question coming in about what is the best way to get to and from the airport so it's really our transportation service I found is the Michigan flyer bus which runs from downtown and also from just the south side of town by the interstate there's a hotel where it picks up Kensington court and at least maybe about every hour and it's only $12 each way in contrast to a cab probably run you $50 to $50 to get from the airport to here so I really recommend the Michigan flyer is a good and reliable service it's a bus and it's a nice coach bus there's Wi-Fi you just gonna hang out they give you water it's a nice ride and that's okay oh no just a second the fire and if you have like too many you know bags or baggage which you don't think you can handle on a bus you can take a cab but you can try to find somebody who's like taking the right to an hour at the same time I see so that you can share the cab right so it's not that expensive you don't need to like take the cab for yourself I've also seen people save money by taking the Michigan flyer and then just a cab from wherever the bus stop is to their location so it's more like a $10 right instead of a $60 cab ride I arrived here with my family and when we arrived we decided to rent a car and it was a good deal I mean we we rented a car in the in the Detroit Airport so we just drove like 30 minutes and we left the car in an hour I mean for international to many times this is an option because you bring a lot of luggage and you prefer not to take a take a bus and even that it's really easy you prefer to take some car and then it's also useful for the first two or three days to have the car in order to buy things to the grocery store I would also like to point out that on the emission flyer runs from around 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. there is limited hours so you have like a midnight flyer and you know hours then you can use another service like that the taxi is the worst idea friends or for friends someone said can you say you had a car I do have a car but I like they have a car I have a car but I very rarely take it to campus proper because I can very rarely park close for anything less than like six or seven dollars which if you're coming from New York City is like wow what a deal but if you do it three or four days a week it really adds up I do use the car for things like going to the grocery store but I've also never lived in a place where I couldn't also take the bus so I have a lot of friends that don't have cars but I find that since cars are a luxury the people who have cars are pretty generous with them so there are people that either don't have a car in your department that was split like a zip car with you to go to the grocery store and back or people that will say like I often say to people in my department that don't have a car I'm going to the grocery store do you want me to pick up anything or do you want to come with me because it's often just an extra two or three minutes and then they don't have to take you know all of their stuff on the bus hey what is it car zip car is an online private car sharing service where I think almost all of the Michigan lots of zip cars but you sign up online and then you basically reserve a car and you pay by the hour so if you have just like a short-term one-off expenser you really need to get to say like Birmingham for an interview and you don't want to pay for a car the whole time it's fully insured and it's not the cheapest thing it's but if you split it with people or for a one-time thing it's more affordable than renting a car and it's often more convenient and Birmingham Michigan because Ann Arbor is in the state of Michigan are there beyond Michigan beyond Ann Arbor what sort of things do you recommend people check out when they get here when they have a little time to check it out well I one of my favorite things to do on the weekend is go to Detroit I love going to Detroit and they have the Eastern Market which is the outdoor farmers market on Saturday morning and it's beautiful I mean there's all kinds of fruit and vegetables crafts people are performing and there's some great restaurants right around there as well I also recommend that if you can and are able to to go to one of Michigan's beaches I just left Taiwan City Beach beautiful it's a gorgeous place so if you can make it up there and get to see that lake like here on Detroit also has you know pro football pro hockey pro baseball the Detroit Institute of Art is a great art collection lots of great things to do their movie series concerts I agree and then also towns like Kalamazoo or Grand Rapids are not too far away those are a great day trip as well I'd like to add on to that Battle Creek is the world's searing city so maybe you can check it out I've never done the tortoise thing at but I think it's a case to recommend I go to a lot of state parks actually because in Michigan if you pay for Michigan license plate it often gives you free admission to many state parks and so it's like a 15 or 20 minute drive to really good hikes that sometimes it feels good to get out of the city of Ann Arbor and see some trees but there's also good parks around Ann Arbor so the Arb is sort of an open-air botanical garden that it's big enough that you can sort of feel like you got away I like that quite a bit I just like that in the sense if you want to get out of the city just go to the North Amphiz of the University of Michigan there are deer and hello right yeah yeah I have two children so I spent a lot of time in parks playing with them and it's been amazing because in the beginning of the summer we decided to visit all the city parks that are in Ann Arbor not outside and we haven't done that yet because there are a lot of places where we can go to the kids and to the playground so there are many activities to do if you have children and even if you don't have them many of those parks have an incredible right row you can row them or in the river or you can also do a lot of nature stuff and sports and even if you want to go farther you can go to Chicago and it's only like three four hours away and if you find a deal you can go and back in I don't know 30 bucks or so it's it's a really good place to go and to visit if you really want to go to Chicago the train is good and it's not too expensive you also take a mega bus they're all bus services too and those will go to most of the major cities in Michigan too so you can take a great hound or a mega bus to count zero or sometimes buses are recommended over trains because sometimes trains are slow so we're talking about a lot of fun stuff we'll get back today but we also know that you're coming here for that students are coming here for academic reasons too so what kind of advice would you share with them and maybe take it from the point of view is when you came to graduate school was surprising to you academically what sort of things did you discover that you think would be helpful to share to students who are just entering I just like to point out that academics is quite rigorous you should be prepared to give it your best that's my that was my thought when I start school here it's not like you can have fun and get good you have to work really hard yeah you have to have be prepared that's it I mean it's not scary it's the reality of grad school it is maybe I have it I might have a different experience because I'm in a health professional program but I when I came here I had set a year out from school I graduated from graduate school and then I taught school for a year and then I came to pharmacy school and it was the sheer volume of work was what I can't it's just I guess what I remember the most because right now I'm not in classes but it was just just a volume of working become acclimated to having my quizzes and exam weekly and every other day and so if you can eliminate like any type of worry and that for me was getting my lunch ready and I yeah these are little things that can cause you to be stressed out when you have to be in some place or in your class of time on time I'm giving my lunch ready at night getting dressed to get my picking out my clothes and I know my car keys were no much best pass was those type of things just getting a routine and getting that established yeah that's all important and then I would just add that you can be working on things kind of all the time until it's important to establish I think parameters for yourself and then be mindful as you're living into kind of self-care not to think of like I'll go exercise you know if I have time later this week because you can always talk yourself out of that you want to if you know your faith life is important you need to kind of carve out time for that and there's it's just important to keep that holistic perspective it's gonna be easy to lose track of I think when you're coming out and getting involved with the work but you're going to be better at the work if you're also taking care of yourself and so make sure you're carving out that time whatever is most valuable for you the best advice I got was to treat my graduate program like a job because a lot of us are either coming from job experience or we really need to make that transition and feeling like I had working hours and then non working hours was really helpful for me not just to make sure that I had self-care but to make sure that I was using those hours as well as I could because there is sort of an expectation and so many different people will tell you that they're reading all the time or that they're working all the time that it becomes really easy to imagine that everyone is working always and that's not in some cases that's true but they might not be as efficient as they could be and so when I would say that you have two hours to get this amount of reading done it let me know that I could stop at a certain point but it also made me more productive in those two hours in the same way that my friends that had jobs knew that they only had a certain amount of time to get that task done and so they couldn't be taking every meeting they couldn't be having every lunch they had to be sort of strategic about knowing their own limits. What are the suggestions do you have like that in terms of creating academic habits whether it be yourself or how you reach out to other people other things that suggestions you have? I like to make a task list and I found that that helps me to keep track of everything that is due or even just the things that need to be done in that day so that doesn't spill over to like the next day and then I'm like running behind on things so I always make a task list of all the things that have been done or even just fill out a calendar of assignments that are due or are coming up. I think like she said you have to prioritize a lot because when you're during the academic year you have to concentrate on your academics as well as if you're recruiting you have to be sure you are the company events that you'd like to work for and if you're doing research you have to prioritize that as well so but then like I know a few people who just go to all these networking events and not concentrate on their classes you shouldn't do that you should strike this balance where you pick the companies which you really really want to work for the classes which are very important the assignments which need to be submitted you have to juggle a lot. So in terms of reaching out to academic supports instructions within your department some I know our department-specific some are probably more shared but do you have things that you found really helpful things you'd recommend? Definitely I think one of the first things when you ride on campus that you should do is really get to know your department coordinators and administrators they're absolutely the number one resource that you can for your department or program specific needs they know all the forms that you need to fill out they know all the how to kind of really interact with the professors and your instructors and even connect you with other students if you need to work with a study group and things like that so they're a really good resource very good for funding definitely for doctoral students you know we have to go through you can either come on the package or you can have like some type of teaching fellowship or other things like that they can help you work all those details out whereas you can sometimes kind of feel overwhelmed so I think getting to know your your administrators they're only there to help and they've been there for a while and they they know everything in and out so getting to know them kind of on a personal level is really important and you know they definitely go out of their way to help you too. Even outside of programs many people will come in and have a statistics sequence or stats requirement and that can be a source of some stress for students and that was for me when I came in but there are regular workshops on campus to help students through those issues and these are people who are really reading the packages and things and help you work through those and help you get it even if you miss a little something in class they can both explain it to you in a clearer way and also many students come in with some concerns about writing and the Sweetland Writing Center on campus is a really great resource for a lot of students to help them think through how to structure their arguments and be clear in their language so that's been a real great resource for a lot of people as well. I know that I am very fixated on the email that Rackham puts out and it was every Friday during the school year and I think it's every month during the summer. I told you I am committed to this email but I found it really overwhelming when I first got here how many resources were offered to me like I could have made a full-time job out of just accessing the resources and so that digest on Friday was really helpful for me to see and decide so I went to workshops on like how to read more quickly how to fill out my FAFSA they have really practical things as well as academic stuff and knowing that there was that one email that would have most of the important like life skills or academic core skills was really helpful to me to feel like I wasn't email is prodigious and overwhelming so if you can find ways to be systematic about looking for those things it really helps sort of cut down on the anxiety of am I missing this or is this big important thing happening and I don't know about it. Just before you jump in real quick so could you talk a little about what Rackham is? The way I think about it is that like Rackham is the bigger college office so when I was an undergrad here there was like undergraduate office of admissions there was the undergraduate career center and now that I'm a graduate student Rackham is like the umbrella organization that covers many of those really important academic skills that aren't necessarily departmental specific so my departmental administrator is really great for things like what format should my prospectus be or when do I file but Rackham has really important information about funding deadlines and taxes and writing and they're also a great like hub that even if they don't I find that the various offices are all really friendly so even if they don't know the answer they know where to point you next. So in a system that's as large and complicated as Michigan is administratively like every department has its own administrator every school has its own organizational system Rackham is a way to sort of have one place that you start and then branch out. People used to recommend any other way that they could. I come back like she mentioned the Rackham emails so Rackham is organizes a lot of social events for the graduate students as well like for them to get together and find new people to become friends with so that email contains not only grant deadlines and professional or workshops and such but also social events like a movie screening or an ice cream social or something like that which I think you should sometimes you should always make a point about going to at least one because you meet so many different people it's always fun in my experience never unsubscribe from Rackham emails and you get a lot of emails from your different schools as well like I'm from the College of Engineering and they send me emails like about career fads and certain like company events so if you unsubscribe you're going to miss out on a lot of stuff so you never unsubscribe. Rackham is also blessed with a really generous endowment and there I would really encourage students who are coming in to visit the Rackham fellowships webpage and just see the number of different opportunities there are for funding from the school. I have a travel grant to go to a conference in my field this fall that comes from Rackham because I've accepted your presentation. This summer I have a spring summer research grant that's funding me for these four months which is great to have and I can work on my independent research. There are pre-doctoral dissertation fellowships there's a lot of resources you can get money to help pay off student loan interest there's all kinds of little pots of money sitting around Rackham and if you're intentional about looking up where those are and do just a little bit of legwork to fill out the applications chances are you're going to be able to benefit from one of those pools of resources. We also are building I'm just going to mention that because we're sitting in the Rackham building right now and it's a beautiful beautiful building you can study in it we hold workshops professional development workshops as well as social workshops so major speaking events major speaking events yes I know that for me it was a big concern about so many of the spaces on campus are filled with undergraduate students which is great because a lot of them are very bound to the campus and you can see them everywhere but sometimes it's a little bit I was not and I still very often I'm mistaken for one but I found it really helpful to come to Rackham to study because there's something freeing about knowing that undergrads won't come into this building really and knowing that like if I'm really frustrated with something or grading it was a little bit of privacy that I didn't get in my department which also has an undergraduate program so if you're feeling claustrophobic in your department which sometimes can happen especially on my department is very small so I find Rackham to be like a welcome oasis the reading rooms are beautiful they're very quiet I will say that one really important thing in the University of Michigan is to know really different people than you you know usually I mean most of us are from come from graduate school to get specific skills and to learn specific things and Rackham is like a place where you can forget about it and you can just remember that there are some people I don't know in my case I study policy but it's nice to remember that there are people studying biology or other kind of fields that maybe you are not necessarily concerned about it but it's always refreshing like to listen them and seeing that there are many other things outside of you I definitely use Rackham to meet other people because my program isn't under Rackham but it still serves Rackham still can serve me and one of the ways that it has is that it's allowed me to meet different people and people from different disciplines in different departments would you mind mentioning your involvement with an organization sure so I'm the vice president of students of color of Rackham which is a graduate student organization of course and it's meant to bring students from all disciplines together for social and professional academic well-being and to provide a safe space where we all can come together and meet and give whatever things that we need from each other and I guess I'm the vice president of Rackham student government which is kind of the student faction representing all the schools in Rackham from the four different divisions humanities engineering social sciences and the other one I didn't say that though so we really liaise a lot with with Rackham administrators here to provide social events for the students collaborate financially also putting together the professional activities and things like that so we really just try and work hand in hand to really bring represent graduate students voices and bring to them events that could be helpful and beneficial to them we did this is a great timing actually we did receive a question does Rackham host social events since you both are since some of you were mentioning that go to football games together etc was the question so yes your particular organizations that you mentioned but can some of you talk about social outlets that you've plugged into maybe a year your school or college or your department program if you have if your department or program has a student organization within that that is active and getting students together I'm part of grads we that is like the graduate society of women engineers it's pretty popular on north campus because that's where the college of engineering is based that you can be a part of grads we on a country level but you need to pay for membership but if you want to be a part of University of Michigan staffer you don't need to pay anything and the good part is that you need I call myself a fake engineer because I'm a fine actually I'm doing financial mathematics it's just called financial engineering so I get to meet all these women and men there are men in category as well and they are from nuclear engineering and biomedical engineers like when they talk about different things it's so interesting like one girl she was talking about nuclear reactors and how Michigan has like one of the biggest I don't remember but it's supposed to be one of the best reactors or some whatever thing so it's very interesting to know that you know Michigan has all this kind of into this one space where it's all about your course and they also host fun stuff like pumpkin carving and apple baking uh movie screening and bar hopping yeah so it's fun so and it's not specific to like engineers and since it's called women's society of engineers you meant that I know men who are a part of society as well so it's a very interesting place we co-sponsored things with Sweeney's too so Reckon does do a lot of sponsorship with groups like that are there are there yeah both my program in higher education in the school of education of social groups that will organize you know very similar events or football game tailgates in the fall but also professional development opportunities speakers will come in that they'll host so it's but we can also have a chili cook off so it's kind of a variety of programming that those two organizations will put together yeah it's the same in public policy I could not name how many organizations are there organizing things because I mean you can find an event even each I would say twice per week or something like that yeah right when you can as you said there are tailgates or there are an conference or a lunch with a speaker or I don't know an afternoon meeting with a professor of faculty so it's amazing you can really find a lot of things and you have cultural night you have cultural night as well so if you want to experience different cultures like you have the Malaysian night and then you have Indian festivals that are being organized so and like I said those emails mention them in their weekly updates so I learned a lot of stuff going to these cultural nights I mean you have these kind of assumptions about certain people and it really does break I mean these events help you you know forget about those cliches I just want to plug the university musical society so um UMS is a huge organization on campus and they bring in like a truly astounding caliber of musicians and students have access twice a year once in September and once in December to the half price ticket sales so you can get tickets to literally anything they put on for half price so that can be balcony seats or you can pay so I have seen like world-class musicians and the prices are cheap enough that you can say well like sure I will go see an ancient Chinese violin symphony or the San Francisco orchestra or the Philip Glass premiered the working rehearsal of Einstein on the beach I've seen Yo-Yo Ma I've seen bluegrass I've seen amazing things and it's so accessible and they're always walkable to campus which is really nice you don't have to go um into a city to see them so yeah Cal you did a riff on on what Ann Arbor's like do you do you care to do that again I just say that uh I think that for its size Ann Arbor tends to punch above its weight you have uh those kind of great cultural aspects here um that are just a great benefit of being part of a place like the University of Michigan which um attracts that kind of talent on a regular basis but we also have the longest running independent film series in the United States that happens in March we have just next week Ann Arbor Art Fair will bring something like half a million people through town over the course of a four or five day period um and that brings artists from across the country around the world to descend on our streets and you can just sort of walk around and and see that and and appreciate those kind of expressions um in a few weeks I'll be at the Michigan stadium for the Real Madrid Manchester United soccer game and they're playing games in places like New York Chicago Dallas San Francisco and Ann Arbor and it's like which one of these not like the others and uh it's just a really interesting part about being here and that you have access to these kind of world-class events and what is a relatively small but um really vibrant college community and you guys actually hit on a couple things that I want to talk about a little bit more or have you talked about uh UMS uh Art Fair those are unique Ann Arbor things let's think about it some of the things that you that we think about as common language here but people might need to know ahead of time or even common um habits and one off rod is 10 after the hour court classes always start at 10 at the hour so it's two o'clock it's at 2 10 and so but don't be late for a faculty meeting at they don't they think two o'clock only classes start at Michigan then or workshops yeah things like that right so what other sort of things do if you can sort of think back we're surprised you are new to as not a football or sports person I'm always amazed at the like the degree to which the city shuts down on Saturdays during the fall it's almost impossible to drive anywhere near that area which is sort of a problem because there's like a really good mire which is sort of a cheaper grocery store um there's major highway access that way it's almost unwalkable yeah they literally shut down but they they literally will shut down streets so it's something to be aware of especially if you live near the stadium that Saturdays there will be people all over your lawn they will be um that it's the the population of the city like doubles on football Saturdays so um and it's concentrated in a very small part of campus you can also see businesses around town the other operating hours they'll say except Saturday September 6 and kind of goes through the home game schedule so it really does kind of overwhelm the place have any of you seen a Michigan football game yeah I've got all of them yeah and anything you'd like to say to students who haven't experienced that uh in my experience it was I mean I was amazed by the size of the stadium in Mexico there is a static stadium and it's very famous in all over the world because it's very big so when I arrived on hour I said oh yeah the stadium is very big and I said oh yeah of course you know and then I searched in Wikipedia and it's bigger than the stadium I mean it's like so it was it was awesome and it was also incredible to see how the how the town changes in one day there are many people in the streets and it's not only like drunk guys they are many kind of people and they are they are only enjoying the game and even many people in the stadium seems that they are not understanding the game very well but they are having fun and they are having a great time just sharing the time with the community so it's it's an amazing experience and yeah I would say even if you don't have any interest in football just as a sociological experience going to a cultural athletic event with 112,000 other people uh and knowing that you are part of the largest group of people doing that one particular thing on a given day in the world is a little uh it's a special thing here and so I would say to just to give it a try at least one time but for nothing else just for the spectacle of all and and you see a lot of interesting things happening on football nights like uh I once saw this one careful yeah undergrad kids wearing just shorts like late fall super cold night running around shouting slogans like it's fun it's very interesting yeah I would absolutely piggyback off of that and just say if you are remotely interested in football definitely get season tickets you've gotten the email by now I'm sure make sure you get that um it'll save you money in the end but even if not I am not a huge football fan uh just like Kyle said make sure you go to at least one people will let you know what are the biggest games of the of the season try and get tickets to those um piggyback off when you said as well it's the largest stadium yeah in all of us for football um so it's it is one I would say for the homecoming game that was my biggest kind of experience when I came to Ann Arbor um coming from a school that didn't have as large of a sports culture um it's definitely something to just check out even if once so I don't know but one when I finished the game one people of Ann Arbor told me like in 20 years you won't remember a single lecture of all the grass program but you will remember this game and I think he was right you know it's an amazing experience it's an amazing experience yeah that's interesting so things are defining it sounds like the uh musical society is certainly defining the the uh sports program the football program it sounds like one of those sort of things that you think of as defining um when you think about Ann Arbor or the University of Michigan things that you think well this makes this a really cool place the eating uh I mean the restaurants out here are so diverse a lot of choices uh so I think that would be a big part of Ann Arbor in case folks who are coming here have not heard um winter here can be a big challenge literally defining elements but for uh kind of the struggles of winter through a good deal of snow and a good deal of cold wind um they should buy a big jacket for uh this time of year and the fall really kind of defined Ann Arbor for me because it is just an impossibly beautiful place to spend these months and to run around town or to go to the arboretum or to just be on the center of campus which you should know is called the dyag and see um kind of changing colors of fall um that's a really special time here and that that also adds to I think the the culture around football and it's the haphaz at this time of the year where you just kind of feel a special energy about the place where people come back from the summer and everyone's excited to be here uh and in the winter time we kind of hibernate a little bit but once the spring starts and through the fall it's really a great place to be I want to say that you know winter gets a bad rap and I'm from this house so I'm like I don't like the code but I can appreciate the winter here because just as much as the spring and summer is beautiful the winter although at the end you might not feel this way it's very beautiful as well and there's still a lot of things going on during that time um people like to ski and um I've I've been to like outdoor festivals like in Frankenmuth where they have like this ice thing going on so there's things that are still going on like it doesn't just stop there's still a lot of things and you can appreciate the beauty of the winter time as well. It's also important to note that I was also as a southerner um you know if we get two inches of snow everything is closed uh but if everything goes on here I promise you that'll also be on time and school will be open and life goes on so people just dress for it get some good boots get a good jacket get a scarf get a hat it'll be fine. I think they closed the um we had a snow day this year but it wasn't a snow day it was like a cold day because it was severely cold and took over um past students on campus and I think that was like the first in like 50 years yeah 30 times it was really close I will say that one of the things that always surprised me after I had been to other universities is how short the break between fall and winter semesters are um so the fall semester will run until like sometimes I've had exams on like December 23rd and oftentimes there's work over the break and it starts right back up again on January 3rd sometimes but there's four months of summer so the the there's a full four months which is different if you're used to the quarter to summer even a sort of delayed semester so I find that the beginning of the winter term is cold it's dark you haven't had much of a rest so it's more important than it could be at other places where you might get the chance to go home I know a lot of um I have friends that are international students that just don't go home for the break um because it is so short so it's an important thing to check um when you get here to sort of plan because I know I've had friends that have booked um flight tickets home and then had an exam 40s later and couldn't make it so um it's it's an uncommonly short break in between and truth and advertising we have fall semester and winter semester which really would by no means spring semester but yeah we have winter term and we push spring summer together yeah and right and she mentioned about you know booking flights in advance the a lot of professors are ready to change your schedules to suit you I mean they're not going to do it all the time but they are willing to accommodate a lot of professors like my class is 90 international students a lot of them wanted to go home and when the professor scheduled the exams way late in the month of December and when like a bunch of people went and spoke to them they were willing to schedule the exam so that happens so it's not a big problem it's worth it's worth the asking yeah working with your faculty um are there other academic norms that you were surprised by that when you got here that again it's hard to think back sometimes you have to register for classes uh that kind of can be a bit challenging when you don't understand in the beginning but then you get the hang of it and like chuku said you always have to be in touch with your coordinators because they know the best and they know like which class like the like the same class would be offered three times a week so which would suit your schedule best so so there's no time clash between the other the rest of your courses so you can you you if you have any doubts if you have an established relationship with your coordinator all this becomes nothing about it it's super easy I would add that I was very confused and remain confused by the physical uh the online platform that one uses to register for classes uh overing access which frankly I find to be uh rather outdated and unintuitive difficult to navigate so I would say to a new student if you feel that way when you come in to register for classes you are not alone and that graduate coordinator in your department um could be a good resource I'm because I just I know trying to navigate and figure out am I actually registered do I just put it in my backpack yeah I'm not an outdated system that I think we should improve but in the meantime there are plenty of people who have found a way to actually go to class and to sign up for them so don't be afraid to ask people or don't feel like you're really missing something just because the the system seems odd and and you have like the the course drop deadline thing after uh uh two weeks I don't know the exact timeline because I remember three weeks yeah after classes start so even if you haven't registered for a really important course you can like personally go talk to the professor and he will try his best to accommodate you in his class unless his class is filled to the capacity and there are no seats I mean I know classes where super popular courses where uh professors have allowed you to sit in classes at not exactly sit given standing classes sometimes yeah so that they can accommodate you so I will say that registration is really important because there's a lot of student benefits that are tied to registration so it's a really important thing in terms of your health insurance sometimes the distinction between are you a part-time student or a full-time student so it's a really good question for your department what constitutes this full-time in our department because there are differences even between programs or between years in my department's case so it's um as much as your fellow students can often be a resource the requirements change the um the health insurance can change and that it's always best with something as important as registration to double check it and you're talking about the Greg coordinators or the program coordinators we'll call them two important people we'll talk a lot about faculty mentors and advisors and so I don't know if anyone wants to talk about advice or suggestions they would get to maximize that relationship well to start off I think one of the main mindsets you have to come into graduate school I'm kind of being aware of is that not only are you going to be a student um of the faculty and of different instructors and professors but you're also going to be in many cases you're doing a research component collaborators and colleagues with them and that's a huge in my opinion that's a huge kind of mental stepping stone to to really get past because that will having that relationship kind of be collaborative and back and forth will really improve the dynamic whereas you don't really want it to be a dominance slash subservient kind of relationship so they you can you're obviously going to be learning from them but they can also learn from you and you have to be able to understand that you are coming here to make a contribution and that they're also working with you to do that so I think that's really important just to kind of put yourself into the right state um when you know kind of pursuing your graduate degree um and then just also you know making sure you meet with them weekly you know establishing the relationship not only have it not only based on academics you know be able to talk to them about social things you know sports activities what they're interested in how their family's doing so really forming the relationship with your advisor with your faculty um that you'll be in contact with this is really important and actually to piggyback off of that I think it's important to realize that not everybody's faculty like their advisor advisor relationship looks the same so I actually don't discuss much of my personal life with my advisor like got married on the fly because it felt it wasn't it just wasn't part of our relationship and so I know that sometimes it would feel overwhelming if you would hear somebody talk about oh I went to drinks with my professor and we were talking about our kids and how amazing that was and I'm sitting there thinking like my advisor doesn't even know where I'm from like this is a very different am I doing it wrong so to realize that different relationships look different and that it's up to you for me it was a really big step to realize that I could have many mentors I have one official advisor in terms of my dissertation but I have many mentors and so some of my mentors are better at other skills so I do have somebody that I can go to if I have a personal problem or and I have sort of career advisors and I have but having like team Katie is more effective for me and there's so many takes a village it does take a village and many there are many ways to get through a PhD I know it was one of the big shifts for me realizing that in my department everybody I thought at times I still feel like everybody but me and wants to be a professor and I'm open to that but I'm not sure that it's exactly what I want and so it was important to me to start reaching out for people that could mentor me in a different career path if that's what I wanted I want to say that I find that it's very easy to establish mentorship here I too am not sure if the actual practice of pharmacy clinical practice of pharmacy is something that I wanted to do but I knew that I wanted to do research and maybe more public type of area and so I have been able to go into like the school of public health and find mentors there one of my greatest mentors at the physician here and I have mentors and one of my other mentors is in dietary sciences so you are able to get the people that you knew you just have to be a go-getter like you have to be active and trying to establish those relationships with people and a lot of people are open with that so can I ask you how does one establish a nurturing relationship how do you find these magical people well I use people to find other people so I may find one person and I start talking to them about what I'm interested in and that person's like oh you know I know somebody who may you know be able to help you and so then they introduced me to somebody else and that's kind of how I've made my way around campus. I like to add a different perspective to this because there's a lot a lot of research oriented stuff advices I am from a professional program as such so we don't have advices assigned to us I'm not even sure if we have like assigned mentors as such but we have like this set of professors who take classes regularly for us like each time as they take at least one course for us so it's important to establish relationships with those professors because they have like professional friends outside as well who can like they can direct you to them or they can give you like you know they can give you professional advice as well because they have experience outside academics as well and then another big part of your relationship with faculty is you have office faculty have office hours assigned for each course so you should make sure that you go to those office hours it you it may not be about the subject as such you can ask about like the general general area that you're interested in or maybe you can approach him about a certain idea you have and you want to research more on and you can ask if he can help you give more directions towards him so that's very important office hours are very important a lot of people know religiously write down those office hours but they never go I mean I used to do that but then I've realized the importance of office hours yeah so taking action going to office hours when they're not necessarily a need of a particular question establishing relationships other sorts of things that you can think of for creating those relationships I find in general that if you go before whatever your concern is a crisis is the best way that it's very hard to establish long-term sort of relationships with people if the only time you see them is when you're in crisis not that your mentor won't be very important to you when you are in a crisis not the crises are all that common not that everybody has multiple crises it's important to reframe smaller problems away from crisis language because that the language of crisis is pretty rampant but I've found that the I am really nervous when I feel like things aren't going well and so I'm not my best self and that's not great conditions for me to meet people under and so the speaker series have been important for me I go to different rackum events and sort of connect with students first and then use that if the faculty seems intimidating it's sometimes easier to go through the graduate student that you know already works with that faculty and ask for you know could you drop my name I'd love in that sort of softens the beach so to speak to making those connections so even if you aren't comfortable sort of cold going to office hours and there's a lot of people who are willing to give advice about how to navigate those relationships you just kind of have to be brave enough to ask I have a point to add on to that like when we were talking about graduates to a coordinator and how it's important to establish a personal relationship with your coordinator I know a lot of students who like the graduate students are off I mean the coordinators are after them about like filling a survey or like you know submitting your resumes on time but a lot of them do it like right like in the last minute they have to be behind those people but when they have something that they need like um like this letter that needs to be posted to some company or reference or something they like they go and go to after the coordinator and think that the coordinator is going to be like you know like that they're going to get the stuff done but when you have like this personal relationship when you're prompt in in replying to their emails they uh it it's human nature they they're more willing to help you so it's always important that you don't go like only when you have crisis uh crisis you should always have this smooth regular interaction with your faculty and coordinators I think it's um just kind of important to note as well that a lot of the methods that we're talking about in terms of forming these relationships are on ground you would have to be here but I think you can even try and start forming those by sending an email right now to a professor or faculty that you're interested in working with my experiences that they've been very receptive to that um responsive as well and even if that is not particularly the case because all faculty and all students and everyone here at the university is busy because everyone's got a lot of things to do um I would just say you know don't let that be a discouraging factor obviously you just keep you just keep going and keep trying sometimes I found that you may have to send a few emails it's not not to the point where you become annoying but just so that you can keep a presence because some people um they do we all get an overwhelming amount of email so if you can kind of just drop a follow-up email a lot of times that does work because people check the email from there to get but then if you follow up with them they remember oh you know what I need to respond to the student so yeah that's important thanks for uh I'm just jumping for a second you had mentioned a tricky about doing um some before you get here sort of behavior are there other things that you guys did before you entered before you're on ground because you put it before you got here I took a vacation I came um most recently from Nashville and drove up all my things and just kind of threw everything into my apartment and I think a day later just went on like a 10 day vacation I went to the beach in South Carolina and saw some of my family and saw some of my friends not as like a farewell tour but more as a way to um just kind of reboot and I you know just finished um about three years of working and I just really wanted that time to kind of step away and reflect a bit and also kind of relax and kind of recharge my batteries knowing that I was going to be going into a pretty intensive transition period and a rigorous program here I also wanted to be really hot so that when the cold came I would appreciate that as well so I wanted to be just as hot and humid as I could get and so I found it in South Carolina but um other than that was that was really great just to kind of have a little bit of time not everyone's going to have you know that luxury but if if you can carve out um a little bit of time I think in August before things really get going around Labor Day I would really recommend doing that. Yeah that's important as well and do you want to go first? Yeah that's important and then like checking into minor details like housing which I never did and I came here and I had to search for housing that's important and then looking up like into your insurance especially for international students where in some countries there's no concept of insurance unless you really want to you take insurance otherwise you don't need insurance so that's a surprising detail that a lot of them don't I mean just flies off your head you should check into that and then international students again I am kind of talking on the perspective of an international student make sure you have all the stuff you need like clothes if you are if you need some medical supplies like medicines prescriptions that need to be filled make sure you have that so that you when you come here you don't have to like you know you're not in a situation where it's kind of difficult. Those are great suggestions and in fact I think you're backing up some of things that were said in the international panel so we'll make sure we link to that so that we get that out because I think they're very particular things for international students yeah in my case like it was very helpful to contact a person that was starting the same that I did so I just asked him a lot of questions first I felt like I don't know like sorry because I said like oh I'm just asking stupid questions basic questions but they are the time of things that everybody are asking themselves so he was very helpful for me he helped me just saying things like if you take this class and this class and this class you won't make it you should take another one because it's a lot of work and that was a very good insight and I think if you have another question you could ask another student that he would give you a lot of advice. And I came up here a month before school started so I was here July well almost two months before school started and it's not only important to contact people about logistical things like where you're gonna live and things like that but also important I'm sure many of you moved here without family so it's also important to make those social connect so before I came here I emailed other like minority students in my program so we can meet and greet before we got here because that I mean I didn't have anybody else here and I think that it's important as well and I think that it's really easy when the school year gets started especially the people that you see all the time your fellow graduate students like my program is really small there's only 10 of us total and it was very easy to slip into all school talk all the time and so it was important and we try and do it every year to have like a day where we talk as humans like where we go to the beach or we go to the park and like school talk is sort of off-limits so that you know who these people are as people because it's really easy to lose sight of that especially when they're things that are really important like about this class to recognize that these are people they have families they have lives they like certain music and to be able to connect on things that are other than your immediate discipline can be really enriching later on this is not the topic of things to do in advance but it's important I have a cohort of nine people and you do spend almost all of your waking hours around some people from that cohort and but we are doing different things as well so we also make a point of once a month doing like a potluck dinner or something and we appoint a referee because inevitably we get into the shop talking shop or about different professors of the class on that sort of thing we're talking about that you know what's the last movie that you saw and that those are really good community building times too. Yeah those are really important points I think because to be surrounded by your own classmates it kind of you don't get a new perspective and when you meet new people you oh this is happening kind of feeling and one more thing about like a thing about socializing is that a lot of students tend to stick for example I'm an international student from India and I tend to stick to I've never done that personally but I know a lot of people who tend to stick to people from their own country and don't mingle with that kind of limits the experience that Annabel has to offer we have we can experience so much diversity so much new experiences and I think when we do that we miss out on a lot of you know things that we will remember way later in life so it's important to mingle is what I was saying. So imagine some things you do for fun the sports we know that's and there are other things you'd say students really look forward to great ways that you find our ways to so we have fun here in Annabel that we haven't talked about. I am a part of the Annabel rowing club which is not part of the University of Michigan University of Michigan has a rowing team as well but that's I've never been a part of it I joined this summer learned to row and I'm a part of the novice team right now and I'm actually going to raise next week and that's kind of exciting I'm no pro but you know it's stuff to do nice stuff to do and say I mean I'm I'm interning and then a good break would be to go for a rowing class in the evening and I'm get to meet a lot of different people so now I get not only to meet students but you know people who live lives which are apart from University of Michigan who like teach at Annabel schools and work at I find up for meet up and it has like I get an email every week just telling me like what meet up groups are going on and it's like different areas so like food and drink or club or religious affiliation and so I kind of like proves that every week to see what's going on and then make my own decisions I actually have a writing group that I meet with that meets sort of off campus and I'm the only one doing academic writing actually everybody else is writing science fiction and fantasy novels so but it's sort of nice to have a place where I still feel like I'm working but it's in a coffee shop and I'm not in the library and I'll also give a plug for the Ann Arbor libraries they have a really great library system with great talks and authors and I find it really helpful to read things that aren't for school that I crazy time but I had a pretty difficult first year when I got here I sort of felt like everybody else was working all the time so I needed to work all the time and I used to keep this note like book full of books that other people referenced which in the humanities is a pretty big deal and I and then so if I had any spare time I would start reading things on that list and it got to the point where I wasn't doing anything else so I really had to sort of stop this summer afterwards and take stock of what I was doing and so I actually have like a firm cutoff time that I don't do work after a certain point or on certain days or four certain weeks and it makes me like more productive because I'm excited about that vacation like I want to be able to stop but it helps me feel like I am a real person because you can very much let your identity be so sort of subsumed under and that can lead to really great work but sometimes at pretty great costs so finding whatever structures you need to feel a little bit of balance. I think that's a very important point. Oh I just wanted to mention that you're talking about this and we'll definitely get to your point. Everyone around who's working very hard you're at Michigan the best and the brightest. Yeah leaders and best. So I just I wanted to hear from other people about how that realization came about for you and was that you know how did you manage that because I think it can be a difficult thing. That was exactly what I was going to add on. Oh perfect. I mean because it's it's a kind of blow on your self-confidence in the sense like you know you constantly think that people are better than you. You're not doing your best. You're not putting your best foot forward and you know it kind of it goes to a point that instead of focusing on what's important it's the fears that you focus on oh my god I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this. So you should think that four point GPA is not the only thing you're here for. You're here for a lot of things and you should focus on all you should have this right balance and you should always be confident about your abilities. You might not get the best grade in your class but it does not mean that you have no skills at all. You have some other skills which are way better than the others in your class. So you should capitalize on your skills on your plus points and so that when you do that you kind of enjoy your entire experience. It's not like this whole depressing stretch like like she said my first year was very difficult in the sense I was thinking oh my god I'm such a loser. I don't know anything about this subject and math was really difficult for me though I did an undergrad degree in math. Math here is really but but then I now I understand that I might not be good at math but I'm really good at business courses and my communication skills are good so I should concentrate on those so that I can like going forward I do better. There's kind of reiterating some of the points but there's a name or term for this it's called imposter syndrome and I think it's prevalent at any higher education institution and it's just something that you really need to kind of just step back breathe and say you know everyone has some type of struggle at some point you know graduate school is is a sign way that goes up and down there are high points there are difficult points but at the end of it you know it's oh you're still here you're still here and it's you know you're working towards a degree just like everyone else so it's just important to keep that perspective you know anytime you start to feel overwhelmed which you will at some point in your graduate career but it is not the end of the world you should have a support group that you can go to to discuss these things get yourself out of a funk and keep going and you know if you have that there it's it's it's only temporary you know what I've said what I've told new students coming in is that you know that our facts with people here are very smart and insightful and so I say if you're on an admissions committee they don't make mistakes like everyone who's here belongs here and deserves to be here and has something to offer and I also advise them the one thing that I've found helpful is when I have those kind of overwhelming moments I go back and look up my application to come here and I read my statement of purpose and my personal statement and I remind myself of why did I get into this and every time I read it I just oh right I came for those three things and I'm doing that I'm doing a pretty good job and I'm still here and let me just take focus on my original motivation sometimes you can kind of lose sight of that and the mix of things that are you're being asked to do but to go back and revisit kind of your foundational principles for this whole enterprise is really important to me and also I think like graduate school is what you I mean you can get from the grade school what you want but and you have to work hard and you have to work with your colleagues and you have to do your best and then see that another classmate got another grade and that's fine if you get what you want and if you get the skills that you are needed to in order to improve your life in order to improve your abilities for the future it's fine I mean it depends up to you what kind of resource or what kind of objective you want to get from here and yeah I mean getting an A plus it's not always important it's more important to really learn what it's yeah I go ahead Christina and Kyle because you're something you had suggested last time that was real helpful I was gonna say that it's hard sometimes when you find yourself studying and not getting the returns back on your study so you may invest you know several hours into studying for an exam or you know writing a paper or something of that nature and then you don't get the grade that you anticipate getting and I know my program is very competitive it's sometimes going to be competitive amongst each other and I always have to remind myself and you all may have read this before and what called the four agreements and it's like one of the statements was to always do your best and I always have to remind myself to just do my best and my best does not look like everybody else's best but I know that I do what I could and it kind of released the stress of feeling like I'm not doing as good as everybody else because I'm doing what I can do and I know that my somebody already said what I do maybe better than what somebody else can do for their skill set but then they have something that's better for them you know that they can do yeah that's super as you had talked about the reading mode one time you had shared that I don't know if you're willing to share that approach you take because I think it helps people understand the realities well I'm not going to speak for for my own program but I imagine that particularly the social sciences that many are like it and that we have a a statistics sequence that we go through but there are also courses that are much more content based for in my case higher education and we can look at a syllabus and there are far more pages for a week of reading than you think are feasible to get through and you're right and so I think over the really the first year you need to kind of figure out the best way for you to read and the best way for you to have me to contribute to your colleagues and I think the way that I broke it down when we last spoke was to say there are six pretty dense articles that I expected to read for of course I'm probably going to really focus on three of them and take a lot of notes and think them through and think about connections across them and then on two of them I'll do I'll read through them I probably won't go as in-depth and spend quite as much time with them and then one I'll know what it's about and I'll have a few marginal notes and as you kind of get a sense of what's in front of you can say kind of these are the things that I'm really most passionate about the most interested in these couple of things seem relevant and this I'm not sure is going to be that helpful and getting me to what where I want to know but I know that someone will really care a lot about this and help me understand it better and if you really invest yourself in those three and then you have a good working knowledge of two then you have one where you just kind of take the hit that really helps you I think kind of a move there's a result thing that you need to go through all 500 pages or whatever that is and fill them with reading with all your notes and everything you ever learned and things you're ever going to have time even on a three hour class session to get through that not that it's all about performing in class it's about identifying one of the most important parts of this week for you to help meet your own learning objectives and then we can also contribute to the educational environment and to not kind of ruin yourself trying to be all things every day because that will burn you out real quick I do just want to point out that like there's there's the imposter syndrome that I think almost everybody feels at certain points in them there's also like legitimate mental health concerns and one of the great things about this campus is there's an amazing mental health network through various services there's one called caps that's sort of in the union the counseling and psychological services where you can walk in at any time and sort of speak to someone on sort of like a right now basis or maybe I can reach on next week basis there's also a psych clinic closer to this end of campus that you can see and I actually was in a dissertation support group that was less like therapy and more like here are some of the problems that people have focusing it was sort of an eight week how do I get through this massive beast of a thing called dissertation from like a mental health perspective and it was really freeing for me to realize that everybody felt what I was feeling to some degree but there were people that were feeling what I was feeling to the degree I was and that there was both help from me and people who understood that so there's not most everybody in graduate school at Michigan understands that this is a high pressure high stress situation and that not everybody's ready to jump into that right away and that there's going to be points where you might need more help than other times and that there's a network already in place for you here you are not the first one to sit at home and need help thanks for bringing that cake there are a number of things you mentioned sweetland right at the beginning of writing support mental health support statistical support actually right here at rackham there are a lot of different things that you will be made aware of when you get here we'll also have links to that and at fall welcome there'll be a lot of representatives from those organizations here too so you can get an overview for sure I think that's one of the um the things that a lot of students mentioned about u of m proper it's that there there are so many resources here so there's there seems to be almost something to support your every need an exaggeration but um so I think it's it's good to know that they're there but it's also good to know that it's okay to take advantage of resources right I'm hoping you would agree with that um because that's what they're there for it so um yeah we'll definitely have some links in this transcript so we're getting to the end of our time am I accurate yes it matches your clock a couple things that had come up when we were talking about doing this call just because to sort of shake it out so talk about it some of the the things that you'll hear when you get here like the dyag um the big house uh is our football stadium um is anyone willing to share what this means does anyone know if you're from Michigan so um people will use this to orient you within the state um froze will use a double because they don't want to um forget the upper peninsula but for instance like if I were to tell people where I'm from I say like I'm from here just outside of Detroit I go to school here my family is from up here because the state of Michigan because the state of Michigan is at hand um so when people will say like oh yeah it's in Kalamazoo they'll almost like gesture to their hand without thinking about it but that's sort of a thing um I just found out yesterday or you didn't realize it yesterday see where we were talking yesterday um any other sorts of things that you think uh they'll be fresh off the the train bus flight and they and might be helpful to know well uh one of the first things that somebody told me when I come to campus there's a lot of m the m Michigan m oh yeah plastered around campus and on the ground and little plaques and everything apparently you're not supposed to step on them before your first exam but there is a way to break that curse if you accidentally do it so um it involves running between Rackham and the undergraduate library before the clock strikes 12 which means you have to yeah which means you have to do it at noon um so I'm sorry so I guess just avoid it unless you're a really fast sprinter fresh off the plane uh you might also might hear about uh Ipsy and wonder if that's a real word and that is uh and it's not but it is uh shorthand for the town next door to us Ipsilanti now which is home to Eastern Michigan University and it's a little odd that we're the University of Michigan and just 10 miles down the road is Eastern Michigan University um but I would also say that downtown Ipsy is also a good place to kind of get out of Ann Arbor and go and try some different things it's a different vibe uh there but it's a good place as well yeah yeah and um we have a lot of colleges around Ann Arbor University of Michigan is not the only university in town we have community colleges and small law colleges around um and there's this Washtenaw community college which offers a lot of courses about practical skills like I know this um friend of mine who took motor biking classes he took classes for two weeks to two days and then he got the license for motor biking so you know you can find things like that there's wash time between uh Eastern and Michigan yeah yeah right in between and we are Washtenaw county uh yeah yeah that's a mouthful and we're in the eastern time zone I'm just gonna say that you always question that so depending where you're coming from and the mall is towards the south uh beyond the south university I think it's called it's no I don't think it is the Briwood mall and it's like the biggest mall around Ann Arbor it has the most stuff you need I think there's a lot of stuff I'd also like to add the league and the union refer to the Michigan league and the Michigan yeah um yeah with the two different buildings I mean you can probably explain it a little better because I haven't I've only been to them like two or three times yeah so the Michigan union has um both of them are like big buildings with gathering spaces with meeting spaces with ballroom they also always have fast food in the basement um so um so if you're very hungry but the league um is the one that was only open for women I think so originally the union was for men only and so they built the league so that ladies could congregate um so I feel a special affinity to the league it's um but they're both they're both on the the the speech that founded the peace corps was given on the steps of the Michigan union by John F Kennedy um so there's a lot of cool history around the buildings um I would recommend that actually they don't do an orientation tour for grad students but there's um tours available through the admissions office and I've seen people like actually like tag on to like campus day tours just to get a sense because there's a lot of history of the campus that you don't get any other way yeah so if there's a chance to take a campus tour I would say do it so you can learn about the curves I'll quickly toss in that we have a new president uh who's coming in uh president uh just retired from that position and just a new president um Schlissel is arriving and uh we'll have a big event here on September 5th which is his inauguration and there will be hundreds of uh academic officials from across the country and around the world who will uh come here uh for that event and that will be a particular event but I think that'll be also open for students everyone else in the main auditorium on campus hill and a big big celebration for that so that'll be um kind of an historic moment university just our first week of class back thank you it's a beautiful way to it is it's very nice and we are at our time so maybe we could uh end with something that you probably hear a little bit especially if you go to a football game is go blue if I if we could say goodbye to everyone by saying it go blue I would appreciate it it's on the count of three one two three go blue we'll see you soon