Online orientation preps grad students for first day of classes
BY TRACIE WHITE
Even before arriving to start graduate studies, Gergana Vandova was getting advice online.
Gergana Vandova sometimes feels like she is an imposter.
"When my experiments don't work, I think that it's me —not my machine or anything else — and that I'm an imposter," she said, owning up to potential fears that she might not deserve to be a first-year graduate student in biochemistry at Stanford.
But through a new online orientation program that promoted dialogue among faculty and incoming students, Vandova learned she is not alone in her feelings. "The professors were talking about this 'imposter syndrome,'" she said. "They explained that it exists, that it's not only you that has it, and that you are not the most stupid person in your group."
Vandova, 26, who has an undergraduate degree from Sofia University in her native Bulgaria and a master's degree from University of Groningen in the Netherlands, is one of the 97 new bioscience graduate students who start their first day of classes today and then attend tonight an orientation dinner, that will build on discussions that first started this summer online. The conversation will probe questions including, "How does being a graduate student differ from being an undergraduate?" and will provide tips and advice for success in graduate school and beyond.
"What we've realized is that being a successful graduate student is almost the antithesis of being a successful undergraduate," said Daniel Herschlag, PhD, senior associate dean of graduate education and professor of biochemistry. All of these students have excelled academically, and it sometimes requires a certain mind-bending psychological switch to enter the scientific world, he said. "In science most of your ideas will not pan out, and you have to get used to dealing with uncertainty, but that's a necessary part of the process." He added, "What is typically referred to as 'failure' is really an opportunity to learn."
Chosen from a pool of 1,820 applications, the new class will enter 13 different biosciences PhD programs, the majority of which are within the School of Medicine. The students come from 19 different countries, inlcuding Switzerland, South Africa, Iran and the Ukraine. Fifteen have advanced degrees. The top two undergraduate alma maters for the new class are Massachusetts Institutes of Technology and University of California-Berkeley.
The graduate students typically spend five years here before receiving their degrees. In their first year, they do lab rotations before settling into a research specialty of their own.
To help students get the most out of that time and "hit the ground running," Herschlag said that the graduate education office started the online orientation program. He and colleagues chose to set up a private group for the new students on the medical school's Community Academic Profile Network, where professors could share orientation materials, post tips, give advice and answer questions in an informal atmosphere.
Students also could use the space to talk to each other and ask for tips about the more practical concerns of arriving at a new school — housing needs, transportation services, good places to eat.
"The interface is kind of cool because it mimics Facebook and other social networks," said Krystal Renee St. Julien, a fifth-year biochemistry graduate student who worked as an orientation assistant for the office of graduate education this summer helping to monitor the space. "When I came to school here there was nothing like this. It's a great idea. Especially for the basics, like, 'Where do I ship my stuff?' Or, 'If I get a bike can I use it recreationally as well as for transportation?' All the stuff you might wonder about."
Vandova was busy over the summer, as she was getting married in Bulgaria. Still, she says, she did manage to carve out enough time to read much of the posted information from students, professors and student advisers, and it has helped ease her "new-student" worries.
"The professors were very motivating," she said. "They really explained what kinds of difficulties we are going to face — how this is going to be a very big transition, how we have to balance classes and research now. I've never done both at the same time."
While she also found the new online orientation space a great source for tips about things like where to do your shopping near campus, it was the professors' advice and encouragement about her future career as a scientist and scholar that helped get her charged for school and helped to frame her attitude about graduate school. "You shouldn't try to be perfect, just try to learn," she said.
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