General Tips For Passing Comps and Saving Your Sanity

So, I passed my comps.  I did so with surprisingly little fanfare on behalf of my bipolar disorder or OCD - two things that have, typically, made me feel shitty for every finals week in history minus the last two.  Comps is the juncture when most of my friends have ended up seeing a therapist and shrink and/or getting put on meds.  I fared ok, though, thanks to their advice.  Had I not had an immense amount of support from my family, friends, and therapist, I would have been fucked.

I think our department, historically, is pretty open with advice and support of those of us suffering through this exercise.  It's not seen as a competition between members of cohort or a cutthroat situation.  We all help one another.

But, not every department is similar.  And not every situation works out this way.  The cohorts before mine were rather large and studied together.  My cohort has 4 people - only 2 of which were taking comps this time around.  So, we were really too small to do anything together.  It felt lonely but I made my own support network and worked it.

Here are some general tips that may be helpful...

1. It's a marathon and not a sprint.  There is a good reason for this.  I had all summer to study.  In reality, you can probably take a month off of everything and study your ass off and pass but you will lose your life and mind in the process.  Make it easy on yourself, give yourself time to adjust, give yourself time to get confident and feel comfortable rather than cram.

2. You can't read everything or prepare everything.  You just can't.  You will feel like, even on the last day of studying, that you still have SO much to do but you can't do anymore.  It is time-dependent and, yes, you could study for all eternity.  While it is tempting to study for another semester, you are better off just to take your exam.  It's key that you do as much as you can and then let it go.  This was excellent advice I was given by friends.

3. Making comps a "job" is much better than freaking out and trying to cram it into every hour of every day.  I'm a sucker for a schedule and when I go into "work" to get things done, I generally do them.  If I stay at home, nothing gets done.  I took a summer class mainly to ensure I was in the office every day.  It was the best decision I made.  I went into class in the AM, did a bit of work for that, and then studied from 1-5 PM for comps daily while doing that scheduled.  Then, it was a 9-5.  It worked.

4. You need days off - plenty of them.  This a million times over.  Again, if you make it into a marathon pace, you can afford to take the time.  Take your time and finish strong.  I told friends and family that their job was to distract me when I was off the clock.  Yes, you will still wake up and have a full on conversation about Street Level Bureaucrats at 3 AM with your SO but, for the most part, you can get them to help you ignore comps and start fresh the next time you pick up a book.  Weekends were KEY for me.

5. Talk to your advisor - he or she will most likely be helpful.  My advisor was awesome during the entire process and so were other committee members.  Everyone gave me good advice and I was talked off the ledge a couple of times by faculty members.  It was good.  Don't be afraid to reach out.  They have all been through this and talked a number of students through it before.

6. Talk to friends that did it before you and take their advice seriously.  My friends were really helpful.  I found an officemate and friend who was much like myself in terms of stress behavior, OCD, and past experiences with school to be particularly helpful.  Even if they have no clue what you are preparing, how much they are preparing, etc. even a strong word of encouragement will help you keep pushing.  Hang out with these people, listen to their stories, it will help.

7. Ask for past comps notes.  Either study with your cohort and trade notes or ask for them from the people that have come before you.  I just handed my stash of notes off to the people in my cohort taking comps next semester. I am sure some of what I did will be useless to them but a lot of what I was given was helpful so use it!  People aren't generally shy about sharing.  After all, you just took a shit ton of notes that you won't use again until you need to make a syllabus, right?

8. Read over past questions before you get too involved in studying to help you figure out what matters and what doesn't.  Before you freak out, it may be helpful to look at past questions just so you can say "yes I can answer this".  When my roommate was taking comps the semester before I did, I read over past questions with her and found that I felt a lot better about my own chances of passing after reading them.  She said they helped her as well.  We have very different approaches to studying but that was one thing that worked for us both.

9. Stop studying well ahead of when you need to take your comps or defend them.  I stopped almost a week before I took my writtens to go swim in a pool.  I couldn't feasibly do anymore.  I didn't do any prepping after that point.  I focused on getting sleep, hung out with my boyfriend, and didn't do a whole lot more.  It was good.  I went away the weekend before my defense and brewed beer.  Believe it or not, there isn't much you can do but take them.  About 2-3 weeks before you take your comps, you will feel like there isn't much more you can REALLY do. You are probably ready at that point to take them even though you would like to prep indefinitely.

10. Get mental health support and get it often if you need it.  Almost every department has a stress or panic attack nightmare to do with comps in recent history.  My advisor told me REPEATEDLY over the course of comps that the only real fear she had about me was my stress derailing me about 4 weeks before my written exams.  I took 4 days off, started fresh, and calmed the fuck down.  I also upped my dosage of valium, something I take for sleep.  My shrink and therapist were there every step of the way.  I impressed them in the end with my ability to stay on target but it really was just doing all of the things I'd been doing before.  If you are feeling completely out of control, go see someone!  Honestly, I slept 8 hours before my writtens AND orals because of life-saving meds that kept me from being manic.  I felt like I was cheating in one way but the reality was, I would have failed without regular behavioral modification and medication.

I didn't experience true hypomania at ANY point on my comps journey past the initial stress of trying to study while taking care of a very sick roommate.  This is the longest I've been stable.  I didn't let that first experience color my ability to pass, either.  I listened to my gut, went home for a couple days, studied there, and then got back on track.  Take care of yourself and be kind to yourself (as my therapist tells me).

Feel free to include your rec's in the comments....

Some opinions on Comps...

I've been a really bad author and haven't updated this blog as much as I would have liked but I'm trying.  As much as I didn't want them to, comps kind of took over my life for about a month and a half.  Well, they took over my entire summer, but I mean, I couldn't really even THINK about anything else without feeling guilty about neglecting comps for the last 6 weeks.  People told me this but none of it really resonated THAT much until I actually buckled down and studied a lot.  I passed, though!  And now, I'm back with thoughts on the process.

I will be coming back with a helpful "tips for comps" post later on but I am hoping that this makes sense to those of you who have taken them or who will take them.  I feel like a lot of us lose out on the process after we do it.  It's so unholy, so vile, so stressful that we ignore the process and what it actually means to us, basically.  We may forget why we do it if we don't dialogue about it.

So, my questions are as follows (maybe we can have a dialogue?):
1. Why do we do comps?
2. Should we continue on with the process of comprehensive exams or are they obsolete?

So, to begin with, I will tell you about our process here.  Students typically take comps at the start of their 4th year of the PhD program.  That's late for the discipline but this program puts a high priority on both substantive courses AND methods training.  We get a lot of classroom time which has good and bad associated with it.  The exams are given in BOTH fields of study (mine were in public policy and comparative politics).  Your fields weight equally.  You have a written exam for each field.  Mine were each over an open-book period of 8 hours.  Then, a few weeks later, you defend your answers.  Some fields give you feedback and others don't.  You can't just pass on either stage alone - your orals and written both have to be "passes" and you have to pass both before you continue.  If you pass neither or only one, you have to retake the next semester.  If you fail that, you fail out, essentially.

In some departments, this is a foregone conclusion and simply a hazing exercise.  Everyone passes but they hurt you in the process.  In our department, few people actually fail but they have failed people and pushed them out of the program twice in the past year and a half.  It's not a foregone conclusion that you will pass and you do have to demonstrate pretty exceptional knowledge of a given subdiscipline in your written and oral exam to pass.  They don't do it to fail you but they don't make it easy, either.

So, with that said, why do we do comps?

Well, I asked this question at the beginning of my studying and then throughout the past 4 months of studying.  There is NO one answer but the answers I have collected seem to fit into three general camps.

Camp 1 (the cynic): Hazing
This is the camp that definitely hates comps the most.  A lot of grad students in-process and  post-process probably fit this mold as well as some faculty members that feel a publication is probably a better gauge of material.  These people see comps as an artificial ritual that just forces grad students to stress out for no reason.  A part of me DOES agree with them.  And while I do agree that much of the Ivory Tower is kind of obsessed with being an old boys club that would be totally okay with an arbitrary hazing process, I think this is a little too cynical to be reality.

Camp 2 (the scholar) : Breadth of Material
This camp thinks comps are fucking awesome.  Or, at least they seem to feel this way outwardly.  They believe that comps are a somewhat enriching process in which you learn what you need to be a scholar.  To some degree, I see their points.  I didn't agree with this idea prior to the process starting. I thought, "Why the hell do I need to know about Latin American party systems, anyway?  I will never use this teaching in policy school!"  Well, it is true that I probably won't but I will have to talk to people of differing backgrounds at conferences, in job talks, etc.  This view does have some merit.  However, I don't know if it alone merits such a horrendous process as comps.  Scholars are often quick to point out "I don't do that" when you ask them a question outside their bag of tricks.  However, I do think the process helped me get my head around how I would make a syllabus and the main arguments in each subfield.

Camp 3 (the pragmatist): Stress Management
My advisor is a cross between a scholar and a pragmatist but she errs heavily on the "pragmatist" side.  Academics are often seen by outsiders as pretty lucky.  We set our own schedules, we don't do manual labor, we get compensated fairly well, comparatively.  However, we also have really high stress jobs in a "publish or perish" environment.  Comps, in this view, prepare you for a life that is high-stress, critical, and demanding.  Your dissertation, publications, and tenure are stressful processes.  If you can't handle comps, according to my advisor, you will be up shit creek.  I believe there is probably more than a grain of wisdom with this view.  As someone who has a tendency to have panic attacks, has a mood disorder, and has always been wound up a bit tight when it comes to exams, this process was eye-opening.  It taught me I *could* handle the stress, over all.


I believe the BEST way to characterize why we do comps combines all of the above approaches.  Comps is a bit of a hazing ritual and a bit artificial in nature but it DOES teach you the main arguments in your subfield and, possibly even more importantly, prepares you for the reality of academic work.


Should we carry on with comps or are they obsolete?
I don't think they are.  Are they awful?  Yeah.  Is "well, I did them so you should to" a justification I think is appropriate for path dependence?

Nope.

I do, however, for the reasons above, think they have merit.  Some have talked about changing the format of our comps here - making them closed-book.  I must say that I am not necessarily impressed by this idea.  My advisor is an advocate, saying it would help us not be held to an impossible standard of knowing EVERYTHING under the sun but I don't think the expectations among some of the faculty in every school and department to change over night. Some of us would be burned.  I'm not sure I feel this would be best.

I think comps suck.  They are miserable, awful, and stressful.  They suck.  But while they suck they also have merit if not just on the merit of those things listed above but also because knowing what would be expected for me in comps on DAY ONE of my program required me to take excellent notes, engage better with the material, and critique every piece I read.

For these reasons, studying was far more simple and relaxed (if it ever could be!) and I learned more during my courses.  So, there are merits to comps.  I just think we need to be careful how we look at them.  We also should reflect more on them as people who have survived our comps.  We need to help those suffering through them in subsequent years and stick to furthering the goals of scholarship and professionalization rather than using them as some sort of hazing ritual.

What say you?  Should we keep comps? Get rid of them?  Change them?  What were yours like?

On Junior Faculty

Ah, junior faculty members.  They are the awkwards of departments in some ways.  It's got to be tough.  You have a "real" job now.  You have grad students to manage.  Some of the grad students are older than you.  You're just trying to become a swan but it's really hard to do because you are on an insane number of random committees that no one cares about.

I have heard some great stories and some horror stories from friends now employed (yay!  hope!) at various institutions.  The first year is the worst I've been told.  It's especially awful if you have a TA and now have to figure out what to do with them.  I have two friends that are at teaching schools who have been teaching a wide variety of courses but at least they are on their own.  They don't have to delegate to us lackeys.

And I know, cry me a river, you have a TA, right?

I'm not so sure.  I guess I will some day know (hopefully if someone gives me a job at the end of this) but for now, I actually feel sympathy for junior faculty.  Especially when it comes to dealing with TA's.  Why?  Well, let me explain.

Today I received my teaching assignment for the fall semester.  I have comprehensives so I asked for the least time-consuming option - an intro to American politics course.  I've TA'ed this before but it was an all essay section.  I had an excellent prof who I asked to work for again, mind you, but a hell of a lot more work than everyone else had to do my first semester - 4 sets of exams with 110 students under my charge.  I asked for a multiple choice section since never since starting here have I had that luxury.  Well, now I do, kinda.  I've been assigned to a visiting prof who got his BA at our school with our department.  He seems like an excellent candidate, has taught this class before, etc.  I'm excited to learn something from him but NOT so excited to have to work in tandem to make up exams as I have just been informed.  I get why the DGS is asking me.  He wants to hand me my own class possibly the following semester.  That's excellent news for me.  It's just annoying because I have a lot on my plate and not all junior faculty "get it".  It makes me nervous.  The first semester is the worst and I am not sure I want to be in the fray again.  I have been told by people who know this prof that he is an excellent guy, very personable, and will fit right in.  Still, it's so old hat to work with faculty that I already know.  I've worked for and with most of them by now.  This is a whole 'nother world and I'm an old person at heart that hates change.  I will no doubt learn a lot, though.  So, I have to just realize this is another learning experience in teaching that I will most certainly appreciate in the end.

I have TA'ed for a first year faculty member once before.  They guy was a great lecturer and he had an excellent rapport with the class.  I learned a lot about what to expect my first year because he did take me under his wing and was a great mentor.  However, he didn't understand workloads well.  I had about 2x's the amount of grading of ANY TA in my second semester of grad school.  The next semester, he knew better and asked to have his class designated writing intensive and got two TA's to do the work that I did myself.  It was hellish in that respect.  He didn't know how much to delegate to me and wasn't sure how to manage me.  I think he gave me too much freedom and let me deal with plagiarism cases in a way that I was uncomfortable having so much power over.  It was hard.  He's definitely changed a lot since then based on what he's told me and other TA's have told me.  He's learned and improved. I think he would be an excellent addition come tenure time and would gladly write a letter on his behalf.  And I am glad I got to see this whole situation over time because it gave me insight into dealing with these situations firsthand.

It HAS to be an awkward situation dealing with graduate students.  I mean, this new guy (from what I have been told by people that know him) is 3 years older than me but judging by his CV, we have a similar amount of teaching experience with similar subject matter.  I believe firmly in a strong chain of command.  I may not always agree with what a prof has a TA do or may not feel that everything is handled perfectly but I do know my place, I know how to speak in turn, and I realize there are 100 ways to skin a cat.  I can imagine that there are TA's that are not like this, though.  Some people seem to want to pull rank.  This really makes no sense to me.  You are a graduate student.  You have no PhD.  Unless you are asked to do something essentially wrong, you should listen to your superior.  This seems  particularly problematic ones that are older and feel wiser.  Even personally I can say I know of one situation that a faculty member told me about which mirrors this.  This was a senior faculty member with a first year grad student, though.  She felt very confident in pulling rank there, obviously.  It's got to be similar to the feeling you felt when you came into grad school and suddenly were teaching students that were pretty much your age.  You have to learn to deal with things as they come and assert that you are in charge.  Never admit that you feel intimidated.

Teaching grad students seems to be a similar quandary.  I am finally at the point where I can confidently think about teaching grad students - but only in stats.  I feel most confident in teaching methods.  The idea of teaching a substantive course still seems far off.  I hope after comps I will feel differently.  Regardless, it's intimidating.  That has to be the worst part.  We had one junior faculty member recently.  This was a wild card class out of my usual subdisciplines but it was relevant to some policy research I'd been doing and I had an open spot.  He is clearly still adjusting to graduate seminars.  The prof was a nice guy, he brought about interesting and new questions about gender and race which I so appreciated, but he sometimes tried to make seminar too much of a democracy.  Another faculty member in his first year of graduate teaching assigned far too much too soon for the first years and ended up frazzled and admitting it WAS too much.

It seems daunting to have all of these challenges on top of tenure woes and various bureaucratic "service" responsibilities.  I worry about this.  I've been told that it "gets better" but only after tenure.  That seems like an impossible dream to dream right now.

To all the junior faculty out there, what say you?  To senior faculty, what was it like?  Does it really just get so much better after tenure?

To all the grad students dealing with it, what have been your experiences with junior faculty?  Similar experiences to mine?  Different?  Better?  Worse?

I'm curious!

Mental Illness and Grad School: You aren't alone

As I bind up these various articles, notes, and papers  into neatly-made subject-specific binders for my comprehensives, I am left to reflect on past  years and the struggles I have had.  Currently, I am not even half way done with my courses and the tower of binders is higher than our coffee table.  My roommate faced a similar situation in January while studying for her comps.

But it gets me thinking.  There's a LIFE in there.  There's my academic life- the good, the bad, the awful, the REALLY good.  There's a student just on the verge in there and an academic ready to publish in there.  Well, on that last part, I can dream, right?

In there, I manage to see that even during the worst times of my life, I've managed to take good notes and keep it relatively together.  There have been points when I honestly didn't feel like living was the best option in my life.  Most of those points were pre-grad school but my first year here was hellacious.  It was wrought with financial difficulty when the university made an accounting error and granted me no money for 3 months.  It was full of more financial difficulty and physical pain after an emergency surgery left me with a $3500.00 hospital bill in the middle of my second semester.

And yet, here I am.  I'm the strongest I've ever been.  It hasn't been an easy week, after all.  My roommate is dealing with tough shit, too.  Everyone is.

Recent talk of mental illness on twitter got me thinking about things.  Several people have been talking about this on my feed.  One commenter noted that she was dealing with problems that seem to be similar to issues that I have with OCD but didn't want to be "labeled" or have it reported back to her supervisor.  Grad students worry about such things.  Hell, I worry about this blog labeling me in some ways but I think the blog shows that there is far more to me than OCD or bipolar disorder.

Most people wouldn't see me and go "yep, she's got a mental illness".  A lot of people are surprised to find this out if they ever get to know me well enough.  I certainly don't TRY to hide it.  If someone is to ask me, I cop to it because I want to show people I'm NOT afraid.  And that's a personal prerogative   Not everyone has to be so open.  But I don't appear any different.  I do well in my program.  This year is a year that has been rough because I have been diagnosed with something new.  PTSD is now the new word.  Another diagnosis - oh, joy!

But my therapist said something to me that stuck.  How many people can you think of that you would label as being "OCD" or "bipolar"? "No one," I replied.  But then he asked me how many people I know have mood or anxiety disorders in academia.  I counted in my head for quite some time.  He then asked me how many people that I had known had had panic attacks.  I counted some more.  There were more people than I could count on fingers and toes.  And, while these disorders may be "labeled" something, I don't label the person that.  I doubt that anyone else does the labeling thing, too, despite a high prevalence of mental illness and anxiety disorders among academics.

It's not a surprise that many of us have such similar issues.  Grad school is incredibly stressful.  It can be down right impossible.  You work 80 hour days, you take your work home with you, and the only people you generally hang out with live with you, work with you, research with you, and share your interests.  It's a giant, stress-induced fishbowl of epic proportions.  We're talking The Hills for smart people sort of drama!

I work in an office with 14 of my colleagues - basically all in one big room.  We know WAY too much about one another and boy have I seen a lot of panic attacks.  I've talked people down and they've done the same for me.  So I know many people who suffer from similar illnesses.  But they are still just people I know, respect, and talk to on a daily basis.  They are friends and colleagues.  And no one judges them for it - or they really shouldn't.  That'd make them terrible people.  As long as you do your job and aren't a total ass, no one cares.

But that doesn't mean you should suffer.  And labels only matter if you let them.  I don't think of myself as bipolar, for example.  I, like many people in my family, suffer from the disorder but I am still probably the most functional diagnosed person in my family.  That's a source of pride in some ways.  I'm NOT the disorder I was so afraid to be labeled as.  I did not want to suffer the way I have seen other family members suffer.  I did not want it to be this ugly mark on my record.

But, you know what?  It's not.  As long as I don't let it.  It's not easy to do that.  It's easy to get sucked in and scared.  I'm not saying that it hasn't taken a long time.  It's taken three years of intensive therapy, maintenance, and drugs to get me to this point but that success is on me.  A lot of other people do the same and you'd never know.

And really, everybody's got SOMETHING.  If it's not mental illness, it's a death in the family or something major.  One of my colleagues lost his father last year.  His father was dying while he was taking comps.  I have had friends that have suffered from really bad illnesses themselves while dealing with the stress of grad school.  Some people have families or start families.  Everybody's got something that makes things hard.

So, don't feel alone.  Just feel like you have the right to be stressed and you have the right to talk to others about this stress - especially medical professionals that CAN help.  And feel that no one has the right to define you with a stupid label, sure.  But get that help and hold your head high.  The only other choice is to throw your hands up and give up.  Fuck that.  You're a grad student.  You came this far partially because you ARE crazy for wanting to do this to yourself and partially because you are insanely motivated and WANT this.  Don't let anything take that from you.  You are a million, billion times stronger than that.

The Pledge

I have neglected this blog a lot in the past because of a lack of time or a worry that what I have to say doesn't seem to appeal to anyone so I am going to say "screw it" and just contribute more.

If you are reading, keep it up.  It makes me try harder to have interesting things on here.  I promise I will try harder to keep you entertained.

This summer is going to be a frustrating and rewarding experience.

I am going to finish up my last required class in a week.  My last required class forever.  And, while I still decided to take a summer class "for fun" and because I don't know what else to do with myself, it really is over, kids.

I take comps at the start of September so I will be studying my ass off.  Meanwhile, I am also going to be keeping my sanity by riding my bike.  I have pledged not only to my advisors to study my ass off and pass comps but also to the wonderful ladies that I ride with to start showing up to rides that the race club in town puts on weekly.  Am I scared shitless, yes.  Should I be?  A little.  But it's all part of that bigger plan - to ride the century that I have been promising myself I would do since my senior year of college.  It's a crazy goal but a good one to have.

And it keeps my mind on track in these trying times.  Not only am I dealing with the best exams of my life but also my boyfriend has decided a life of academia is not his thing.  He moves back to the east coast in a few weeks and I will still be here in sucksville.  The good news is I have an amazing roommate, a lot of great women to ride with, a bike, my best friend (my dog), and a pool.  That's still a damn good summer, I think.  

Look forward to more posts from here on out whether they be about my papers, teaching, dog, or bike.  I promise to keep it UTD from here on out.  I mean, I'd look like an idiot if I didn't.