Jarita Greyeyes is a third-year student in the Race, Inequality, and Language in Education (RILE) Ph.D. program at Stanford University. Greyeyes recommends building a community of support to help you cope with unprecedented life circumstances as well as the stresses of completing graduate degrees, and believes in the power of humor to create connections, and is an avid meme-sharer. She recommends sending voice notes to friends and colleagues to get to know one another and have brief check-ins. Creating a community that is intellectually and personally supportive is essential to thriving in graduate school.

Highlights

“Be sure to not social isolate yourself during this time [when sheltering in place].” (0:30)
“Focus on creating connections within your cohort and beyond like physically distanced outside reading groups.” (0:46)
“Get perspectives of people in your cohort and those in the upper years to share and pass on knowledge.” (1:55)
“Recognize that ideas are built on foundations of other ideas and have a community that is intellectually supportive of you as a person.” (2:25)
“Make sure to have a really good community and check-in by email, Zoom calls, voice notes, memes, [or other methods] to get to know people.” (3:06)