5 Mistakes Graduate Students Make

Hey everyone, this is Self Made Millennial. I'm Madeline Mann and today we're going to talk about five mistakes that graduate students make while they're still in their grad programs. You're spending a lot of time, a lot of sweet money on this graduate program, so I'm here to make sure that you are carpeing the dm. Also, I'm talking in general about grad programs. Your mileage may vary. So if my tips are not necessarily exactly in line with your grad program, then do leave some information in the comments so we can all learn from it. The first mist that graduate students make is not milking being a student.

Now, I'm not talking about milking cows, I'm talking about milking opportunities. People love to help students. They also know that you're super broke, so you can write to conferences and say, hey, I'm a student. Would I be able to get into the conference at a student discount or even hey, can I get in for free? Embrace that you're broke AF and just ask for cool discounts that will help your professional development. Additionally, asking for informational interviews when you're a student is so much easier than once you're out of school because people want to sit down with students, tell them about their career, help them, and so really use that to your advantage. And if you're not that familiar with informational interviews or you want to know exactly how to reach out to people, how to do them, this will seriously escalate your career to new levels. I have a video that I will link in the description on how to have an exceptional informational interview. So check that out. Make it your goal to do at least one informational interview a week. The second mistake that grad students make is not working while they're in school.

While your degree might help you with chances of getting hired, really, companies want to see real world experience. So if you put your career on hold to go to graduate school, that might actually stagnate it. But if you are working at least part time while you're going to school, that can really skyrocket your trajectory. Being in grad school is such an amazing gateway to get into a lot of these internships at your dream companies. A lot of times they will pay you diddly start. I had two different internships while I was in grad school. One of them paid me $18 an hour and the other paid me $10 an hour. This was not a time to get all up in my ego and all about my worth. I was there to Learn and get my foot in the door. And by golly, I did. And then once you graduate and become a civilian like the rest of us, those companies often no longer want to hire you for that same internship. Those are really reserved for these students. If you're applying to internships, there's a video you have to watch. It's about the five different types of internship. I went through hundreds of resumes and synthesized the different approaches that people took and what approaches works the best. So check that out. I will link it in the description. Third mistake that grad students make is failing to build relationships.

When you're paying tuition to these big fancy schools, part of what you're paying for is the network. Make it a point to really get to know your classmates, your professors. When there's a mixer, make sure you show up even though you're tired and you don't want to sit in traffic. Just do it. When. When people ask me, should I go to grad school? One of the things I tell them is that grad school is for participators. That means if you just want to show up to class, you know, get your degree and bounce, you're really missing out on a lot of the social capital that you get from enrolling in a program where they bring together like minded people who are motivated like you. So build those relationships and keep a running list of all their emails so that once you graduate, send them emails every six to 12 months, updating them on how your career is going. They seriously will enjoy reading this, I swear. And it's just a great way to keep that rapport going. The fourth mistake that grad students make is having an undergrad mentality.

What I mean is in undergrad you would skip some classes, you would calculate how many questions you have to get right on the next test in order to just barely pass. And you're kind of strategic about cramming and all this stuff. And that's really not the way grad school is. Grad school is often less focused on grades, but it's all about your personal journey. So it's really you get out what you put into it, make sure that you go all in, doing all the readings, being in all the discussions, because really the only person who loses out in that situation is you. And the fifth mistake that grad students make is not documenting enough.

I would say one of my biggest regrets in grad school is that they gave me so many, so many resources. And while we weren't really tested on a lot of it, I could have spent more time really utilizing those resources and document all the information they were giving me. I'll give you an example. So part of my program was learning how to build training facilitations for companies. So they would bring in facilitators and they would do a facilitation with us. And now at my job, I build, you know, corporate training facilitations. And I think about, oh, yeah, we did a facilitation back in grad school. Maybe I should reference those notes. And I look at the notes and they're. They're so sparse. I could have done a way better job of not just writing, you know, the main ideas of the facilitation, but all the little transitions and the examples they use that would be so helpful to me now. Have a good eye about things that might not be relevant today, but you could use in the future. Take photos of the slides that your professors put up. Make screencaps of different resources. Just capture all the information you can. Will you graduates. You're going to do amazing. I believe in you. And if you believe in me, please hit a like on this video as well as subscribe if you're new to this channel. Thank you so much, everyone. WiFi high five.