Written by Mona Heidary

Thumbnail Photo by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash

Entering grad school can be seen as a significant milestone for many undergraduates. It can signify one's thorough awareness of their future plans, or an aim that one has set, tried hard for, and now achieved. Graduate school can be a path or a bridge that one has built to achieve career or personal aims. No matter what entering grad school means to you, what you experience, especially in the first year, is a combination of feelings resulting from high levels of stress, pressure, satisfaction, and a sense of achievement.

This is exactly what happened to me. Before I arrived in Canada and started grad school, I was so excited about the journey ahead that I almost forgot all the difficulties I might face. As a learning enthusiast, I kept imagining myself taking courses and enjoying learning. I forgot about all the issues I had to handle in terms of expenses, assignments, course requirements, and so on. This ignorance led to a shock because when I started school officially, the reality caught me by surprise. Suddenly, I found myself overwhelmed with all the requirements I had to simultaneously deal with. Among the challenges I faced were finding a part-time job to make my financial ends meet, meeting tight deadlines with high-quality work that would meet instructors' expectations, taking care of my physical and mental health, and adapting to the completely new environment I was in. Feeling tired and insufficient most of the time, I decided to find a solution. So, I started by using several time management strategies to ensure adequate time is allocated to each task. Little by little, this helped me to find a balance and stick to it.

Nothing in the journey that is the first year of grad school can be described as easy. You find yourself in a very serious environment where high-quality work is presented and expected from you. Adapting to this new environment means you have to get ready to make changes in different aspects of life. For me, these changes had to happen in a broad sense. I had to learn how to deepen my academic knowledge, familiarize myself with research and different research methods, and learn how to improve the quality of my work to the expected professional standard. But as I said, these changes were happening in more than just the academic aspect of my life. Other elements were also affected to a great extent. For instance, meeting financial ends was one of the first challenges I had to overcome. It is not easy to find a part-time job for a grad student who has to spend a lot of time studying. Daily expenses, as well as tuition payments, are not elements that one can ignore either. The practical solution I found was to apply for different jobs to increase the chances of getting hired.

Another surprising challenge was trying to maintain a balance between taking care of my mental and physical health which turned out to be one of the most important. A couple months after the beginning of grad school, I found myself overwhelmed and buried with work. I barely found time to rest. This imbalanced lifestyle was affecting the quality of work as well. To address this problem, I had to manage my time more efficiently to set aside some time for resting. In other words, I realized that relaxing is as important as working.

On the flip side, the first year’s outcome is way beyond academic learning. I managed to acquire skills for decision-making. I now realize that it is vital to pause every now and then, look back, and see where you started, where you are standing in your journey, and how far you have come. This helps you with the future journey you have ahead. Self-growth is another aspect of life in which the first year of grad school helped me. Skills in planning and prioritizing, time management skills, increasing patience, and intercultural competence are among the other factors that I developed with the help of the experience I gained in the first year of grad school.

Most people attend grad school to develop their skills and capabilities. This can be for the sake of progress in a career or for deepening knowledge and mastering a specific topic. The university where one decides to continue their education plays a crucial role in their journey. One needs to experience different possibilities and alternatives available after graduation to make the right decisions. In this regard, Saint Mary's University helped me a lot. The courses in the first year were designed so that we got the chance to experience working in both research-based and practice-based environments. By the time we completed the first year, many of us understood our real interests well, which can be considered a milestone since we could now make better decisions about our futures. In terms of research, most assignments were designed in a way that required research. Action research skills were taught, practiced, and applied. Regarding practical skills, we all had practicums where we could apply what we had learned. Now that we are almost at the end of the first year, most of us have a good understanding of how we want to continue, whether we prefer to do more research or we want to start working in other environments. Another opportunity SMU created was group work and individual work. In this master's program, students had equal chances to work individually and in groups. This also helps students acquire interpersonal skills.

Being in grad school means entering a far more serious academic and professional aspect of life. The skills and knowledge you gain help you gradually set your pace and gain adequate expertise for the future life. The very first days of graduate school can be overwhelming, but you learn how to adapt step by step . Later, when you look back, you will see that the takeaways are worth the pressure you underwent. Therefore, it is important to enjoy the journey, do your best, and actively shape your future.

The First Year of Grad School: A Personal Perspective

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