In this episode, Nilüfer talks with Kristen Roupenian about writing a dissertation without fear and without silencing your voice. Everyone who pursues a Ph.D. knows the challenges that come with writing, but Kristen offers a refreshing take on the process. She reminds all of us that instead of writing to the imagined hostile audience, we should picture ourselves writing to someone who is willing to meet us halfway. Hearing this interview gave me a feeling of relief; I wish someone would have giv...
Apr 18, 2021•54 min
Stony Brook, the New School, and Baruch College are among some of the schools where graduate students have started to protest in order to abolish fees; similar protests continue on a number of college campuses throughout the United States. In this episode, we discuss the harsh reality of student fees. Should graduate workers, who are not so different than school administration and staff, have to pay fees? Are we financially secure enough to allocate part of our already limited budget for service...
Mar 08, 2021•18 min•Season 1Ep. 13
In this episode, we talk with Veronica Shepp about gender-based violence in academia and introduce the idea that Title IX protects universities more than the victims it was supposed to protect. Busra and Veronica discuss re-traumatization as well as ways the system could be improved.
Feb 22, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 12
In this episode, we talk with Dr. Simone Kolysh about the experience of navigating the academic system while being a part of the LGBTQ community. Dr. Kolysh draws from their research and their own personal experiences, as they share their story with us. As Nilufer and Dr. Kolysh talk, their conversation ranges from the reasons why LGBTQ students drop out from their PhD programs to the ways that academia forces many to hide their true selves if they want to succeed. The stories they share are hea...
Feb 03, 2021•39 min
In this episode, we talked with Dr. Mateo Duque from Binghamton University about teaching. For each of us, teaching means something different. For some of us, it is a way of funding our PhD education. For others, it is the reason we decided to pursue a graduate and academic career. And, just like every other experience, teaching comes with its own unique challenges. Listen to Mateo and Aaron discuss the joys and perils of teaching!
Jan 04, 2021•38 min•Season 1Ep. 10
I don't have an Instagram account but I am frequently on Instagram. My guilty pleasure is looking at pictures of people and tracing moments from their lives. I have thought for a long time why I am so interested in other people's lives. One viable explanation that I came up with was that as I often feel unsuccessful as a PhD student, I might be able to become more "successful" by imitating their lives and life choices I see in these pictures. I am constantly curious about how to be a PhD student...
Dec 14, 2020•34 min
In this episode, we look at the mental health issues that graduate students face. It is truly an issue because graduate school affects the mental health of students in peculiar ways that we might not be familiar with in other professions or lifestyles. In an era where we have a multiplicity of practices that promise us sanity and happiness, we wanted to backtrack and understand how we have reached this point of needing these practices in the first place. In this episode, we interviewed four grad...
Nov 30, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In this episode, we are focusing on one of the most complicated and crucial aspects of the PhD journey: the relationship between advisor and advisee. Advisor and advisee relationship, like any other interpersonal relationship, is unpredictable and mysterious. It is impossibly hard to predict what the future of an advisor-advisee relationship will look like or how it will develop over time. Despite the unknown nature of this relationship, many PhD students start their interaction with their advis...
Nov 16, 2020•36 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In part 2 of "Is Academic Coaching the Solution?", we relentlessly ask the same question. We really did our best: we re-listened to the interviews many times, we did some yoga and meditation, and then we interpreted these interviews from a positive perspective. Alas, it did not help, we still think that academic coaching is not the solution. This week, we go beyond the individual aspects of working with an academic coach and jump to a higher level. It was impossibly difficult to put the script t...
Nov 02, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 6
In this week's episode, we talk with Dr. M Adryael Tong, Dr. Craig Gallagher, and Dr. Matt Luckett about their experiences with the phenomena of academic coaching. For the uninitiated, academic coaching is a service that you pay for to have a professional look over your application documents–your CV, your cover letter, your research statement–and offer you tips and strategies for improving those documents. Academic coaches can also be hired to give you one on one interview prep. What interested ...
Oct 26, 2020•27 min•Season 1Ep. 5
In the fourth episode, we talked with Dr. Albert Fu, who is a professor of Sociology at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Albert started to work as a temporary faculty member at a community college right after he got his PhD. A year after, he was "lucky" enough to get a tenure track job, so he has seen both ends. Thus, he knows why adjuncts deserve better, and he feels grateful to have a stable life with the securities that a tenure job gives him. He has seen both ends. Thus, he has observed ...
Oct 18, 2020•37 min•Season 1Ep. 4
In this episode, we document the experience of working as an adjunct. To help us understand this experience better, we talked with James Parisot. James has been working as an adjunct for the last 8 years. He started to work as an adjunct when he was a PhD student. After he got his PhD, he moved to Philadelphia, he published his first book, and he is working on a second book, in addition to many other projects, but he has to continue working as an adjunct because he has to make money and he likes...
Oct 12, 2020•42 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In the second episode, Dianey Leal joins us. She is a PhD student in Higher Education and Chicano/Latino Studies at Michigan State University. In this episode, Dianey walks us through the deepest corners of the neoliberal university and describes to us in detail the myriad characteristics of it. While she shows the ways that the neoliberal university crafts its members in unexpected ways, she also touches on the immediate impacts of it. As she experiences the neoliberal university as a PhD stude...
Oct 05, 2020•41 min•Season 1Ep. 2
In the first episode of Just as it Sounds, we discuss what the neoliberal university is with Dr. Evelyn Morales Vasquez. Evelyn is a post-doc at the University of California, Riverside and her research focuses on the psychological and emotional impacts of neoliberalism in higher education settings. During this one-time experience of conversing with an expert on the impacts of “neoliberalism”, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity of gossiping about the mystery of neoliberalism. Evelyn did a tre...
Sep 27, 2020•43 min•Season 1Ep. 1
