By Adam Boocher

As Dan mentioned in his post a few weeks ago, we’ve just revamped our mentoring program at Berkeley.   I think Dan gave some excellent tips on the academic side of things, and so I thought I’d write some advice from a different angle.  I’m finding more and more that grad school isn’t all about the research and the math.  To give an example, the math department ran a workshop a few weeks ago that I’ll call “A friendly visit from the university psychologist.”  The discussion basically centered around the stress involved in being a graduate student and ways of managing it.  It was really useful to have a candid discussion about this side of the graduate school experience, and we got some useful tips, which I’ll share below as well as some of the things I’ve found helpful. Continue reading →

Guest post by Diane Boumenot, Manager, Membership and Programs, American Mathematical Society

I want to alert the blog readers that much has changed this year about how the Employment Center will operate at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Francisco, January 13-16, 2010. Registration and scheduling are now completely electronic, and registration is free.

We have a new website which combines our job listing service (EIMS) with the Employment Center data. The jobs are publicly viewable and new listings are coming in daily. Note especially the jobs that have the tiny “EC” logo, meaning that job will be interviewed for at the Employment Center.

Continue reading →

by Daniel Erman

I just discovered that Eszter Hargittai has started a career advice column for academics. It’s called “Ph.Do” and appears at Inside Higher Ed. Here are a couple of quotes lifted from her first column, which should give a flavor:

The pieces I will be writing here in the Ph.Do series are built on the premise that understanding the many implicit practices of academia can be extremely valuable in navigating various stages of the system well.

and for graduate students in particular:

The path to tenure begins in the first year of graduate school.

At the moment she has an introductory post as well as two posts on how to get the most out of academic conferences.

by Daniel Erman

I’ve just begun mentoring a pair of first year graduate students as part of Berkeley’s mentoring program (recently revamped by the student group Unbounded Representation).  Thus, I’ve been recently wondering about the following question:  What is the most important piece of advice for a first year graduate student in mathematics?

I offer my opinion below the fold.  In addition, Adam Boocher, who is a 2nd year graduate student (I’m in my 5th year) will offer his opinion in a companion post on this blog.  We’re also curious to hear from anyone else with an opinion on this question (especially those of you that diagree with us!) Continue reading →