On February 28th, GAP held our final mentoring session of the year for the current first-year graduate students. We focused this session on Special Problems, the importance of a good relationship with your advisor, and what the next steps are. These mentoring sessions have been extremely useful for GAP to get to know the first-years and understand how their year has been going. They have been very friendly and talkative, it’s been so fun meeting with them throughout the year!

After hearing some feedback about how classes are going this semester, we discussed summertime! This is the first semester without a heavy workload, and you will find yourself with a much more relaxed schedule. This can bring stress to some people who are used to lots of deadlines and structure. This is an opportunity to learn about your field, stay organized, and set up a new schedule for yourself and your advisor. Please reach out to any of the mentors if you would like any advice.

Finally, we talked about your relationship with your advisor. This is one of the most important things in graduate school that can make your life much easier. It’s important to have clear, consistent communication, and goals that are aligned. If you do not feel supported, evaluate why the relationship is not going as expected, and make efforts to improve the relationship or consider switching. This is again something the mentors can help with.

Thanks for being such an awesome year! We are super excited to see how your year ends up. We will see you at the end of the year party, and hopefully within GAP leadership soon!