It feels like yesterday that I told the Internet about my acceptance to grad school. In my time off after undergrad, I thought I was prepared and knew exactly how to handle my first semester, but it turns out, some things just won’t sink in until you’ve experienced them.

Here’s what I’ve learned the hard way this semester, and what I resolve to remember to do for the rest of my time here.

Start early, finish early.

I once wrote a post called “3 Ways I can be a Better Grad Student”. When I wrote this, it was fairly early on in the semester and I thought I would start implementing those ideas right away. I didn’t. At all. This testifies to one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in grad school so far, which is to start early. You don’t want to be the sucker (me) who is scrambling with not only writing but also preparing presentations three weeks before final papers are due. I had my bibliographies finished in September, but waited until November to start writing. Folks, this is a very bad idea. I started early, but I didn’t stick with it. Start early, finish early. Your mental health will thank you for it.

Have people you can confide in.

I had a pretty rough three weeks due to working on my papers at the last minute. My stress level was high and I was sleep deprived. Then, one of my papers got ripped apart, and I literally had an emotional breakdown in the bathroom. I was comforted by a couple sweet friends and (when I got home), my husband. I never thought I’d be the type to lose it over a professor’s feedback, but I did. Talking it through with my family and friends helped me realize that I had irrational expectations for myself and for the way I thought my professor would respond. In addition to having an emotional support network, having friends and family around that you can trust can be helpful if you need a fresh perspective on a paper you’re writing.

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

Perfectionism isn’t healthy, but it is prevalent in academia. My work will rarely be perfect, even though I want it to be. I don’t strive for perfection; I strive for excellence. If I’ve done something to the very best of my ability, that’s as perfect as I can get.

Don’t compare yourself to others (unless you’re going to do something about it).
My first instinct when I got here was to compare my academic level to that of my fellow students. This can be a good thing, for the sake of personal and professional improvement, but I wasn’t comparing myself to better myself. I was comparing myself just to pick myself apart and not doing anything to better myself based on what I saw in my fellow students. I’ve realized that my colleagues are all at different academic levels, because we all have different knowledge bases and skillsets. And that’s okay. I started to take note of what I liked about my fellow students’ work (we all present our papers in seminar) and now I’ve started trying to improve my own work.

Take time to relax.

I think it goes without saying that doing something relaxing helps our brains to reset and come back to projects with a fresh outlook. Get offline, unplug, spend some time disconnected from your computer, emails, obligations. Enjoy the vividness that comes from living in the moment.

Nurture your relationships.
Nurture your relationships with your fellow students, your professors, and your personal relationships. Make time to go out with friends or go to a professor’s office hours and try to get to know them. For me, this isn’t about networking, it’s about being able to feel like part of a whole.

Be thankful.
It’s easy for me to get stressed out, have an existential crisis, or feel insignificant within the larger scope of my department. I try to remind myself that I’m here for a reason, and that just me being here, in this teeny town, is something to be thankful for. I didn’t have to get accepted to graduate school, but I was, and I desperately wanted to be. I’m thankful for that and for how incredibly fortunate I am to be here.

Remember why you’re here.

This comic might seem morbid, but it has a grain of truth. I’m here to make a difference — in my department, first, and then, when I graduate to the “real” academic world, within the larger context of academia. The contributions I make to my department might not come for a while — a conference presentation here, a published article there — but they’ll add to the department’s own contributions to academia through admitting X graduate student. I need to be proactive about making that difference here, as no one will hand these opportunities to me.

For more on grad school life, visit my Tumblr, where I blog and offer advice to those who ask about going to graduate school in art history. I also wrote this short PDF guide for prospective art history graduate students. For those of you who might be taking your first ever art history course, I wrote this guide.

I’d also like to say that I finished my first semester of grad school with a grand total of 19,588 words, 78 pages, and 202 footnotes! The papers I mentioned in an earlier post were some of the funnest projects I’ve worked on so far, and I can hardly wait for Spring 2013 to start — but I’ll enjoy a nice break in the meantime.

Have a wonderful holiday season!

Tags: Art History, Grad school, Graduate School, life lessons, Personal, School, tips, UCLA, UDel

Today, I want to talk about triumph and the people who help us become who we are.

One of the major people in my life who took a chance on me and believed in me passed away a couple years ago. I never got to tell him that I got in to UCLA, when most of his colleagues told me I never would. I never got to tell him that I graduated from UCLA with all three of the honors that the College of Letters & Science offers. And I’ll never get to tell him that I was accepted to graduate school this year.

Mr. Spica taught AP Art History at my high school. In my senior year, I became extremely interested in this field and wanted to take the AP Art History course being offered. It was the second semester by the time enrollment opened up. The first semester covered art since the beginning of time (okay, not really) through the 15th century. Like any good teacher, Mr. Spica knew that usually the first semester of any course provides you with the foundational information you’ll need for the second semester. And thus, he was adamant that I not be allowed to enroll. I got a letter of recommendation from one of my teachers (who majored in art history in college). He still wouldn’t let me in, worried that my lack of knowledge would bring the rest of the class down and force the class to move at a slower pace. I told him that I would sit in his class until he enrolled me. This agreement worked.

My first day sitting in, he gave us a test. We were to write essays in response to slides on the screen within thirty minutes. I’d never written an art historical essay before, and I’d never seen most of the slides. I also had no idea what on earth an “art history” essay was – as if it could be any different than other essays! I remember one slide in particular, the gardens at Versailles. I had no idea why these gardens were designed as such, but  I could tell by the massive amount of land they take up and their rather ornate landscaping that whoever designed them did so as a visual and physical reminder of their power and wealth. Mr. Spica graded these essays on a scale of 0 to 5. I got a 1. My next “test” was the homework, what he called style sheets. Style sheets were charts that had an artist’s name, years active, art historical period, examples of their art, and descriptions of their style. These were graded on a scale of 1 to 10. I got a 10 on my first style sheet, and he decided to let me enroll in the class.

My fellow students told me that, with his monotone voice, I would fall asleep in Mr. Spica’s class. Some told me that it was excessively difficult and a waste of time. They were all wrong. Mr. Spica loved art history, and loved teaching it. I think his favorite was modern performance art. He went to the Hammer and LACMA frequently. For those of us who were taking the AP Art History exam, he gave us a special review night and bought us pizza. One of the most endearing things about Mr. Spica was his grading. He always graded all of our papers with a green gel pen. He was never without it.

The last day of class crept up on us. Mr. Spica did the same thing every year: the class played “art history Jeopardy.” The grand prize was a Toulouse-Lautrec kaleidoscope. The players quickly came down to me (the girl who missed half the course) and four girls who had been in the course for its full length. It was intimidating. I kept forgetting to say “What is ____” and the girls would collectively groan because I got the right answer but didn’t say it right and Mr. Spica graciously allowed my faults in proper game show procedure.

Somehow, I won art history Jeopardy. I beat out the entire class after being there for just one semester. No matter how silly this may sound, the moment I won art history Jeopardy in Mr. Spica’s twelfth grade AP art history class was an incredible triumph for me. I loved art history in a way that my other classmates didn’t. I was good at it. This small triumph confirmed it. No one, especially not Mr. Spica, thought I would win art history Jeopardy, and why should they? I think Mr. Spica’s mind was changed as he ceremoniously handed me the grand prize and announced that I must be a “space alien” because I became so good at something I had no previous experience with.

Mr. Spica wrote in my yearbook in his favorite green pen. I was so proud to be his favorite space alien.

Mr. Spica coached girl’s tennis at my high school and would often go to UCLA’s tennis matches. I worked at Coffee Bean by UCLA, and it was here, a year or so after graduation, that I told him I received a 4 (out of 5) on the AP Art History exam and that I was majoring in art history in college. He wasn’t surprised.

That was the last time I saw him.

I said at the beginning, this post is about triumph and the people who believe in us. Mr. Spica was cautious to take a chance on letting me into his class, but eventually, he did, and because he believed in my potential, I grew exponentially in a field that, some years later, I can’t imagine not being in for the rest of my life. He introduced me to the basics of art history and critiqued my writing with unabashed severity, sometimes writing “No!!” with his green pen or enclosing portions of my essays with a large, underlined, green zero. I wish I could thank him for his honest critiques. And I wish even more that I could tell him of my latest “Jeopardy” moment of triumph: getting into graduate school.

I’ve had many supportive teachers (professors) since graduating high school. I will rave forever about how incredibly generous and wonderful the professors in UCLA’s art history department are. It’s no secret that UCLA has been one of the best experiences of my life, and that I credit them with teaching me how to be a scholar. It’s also no secret that I want to make art history my career. And, thanks to the wonderful training I received at UCLA and above all, the support from my family, friends, and professors, I’ll be able to.

Beginning Fall 2012, I will be studying at my dream program, which has what I believe is one of the strongest Early Modern art history programs in the country: the University of Delaware. I am so excited to begin my studies there, specializing in (of course) Italian Baroque art!

Knowledge is the light of the mind

Tags: Academia, Graduate School, UCLA, UDel