What I needed to hear, but no one said

Posted on November 15, 2021 by alexisnewton

Currently, I am in the second year of my PhD program at Emory University. In 2018, after graduating from my undergraduate institution with a double major in mathematics and English writing, I began attending Wake Forest University for my masters degree. Three weeks into the school year, I sat down and wrote the following.

September 2018 – 1st Year of Grad School

“What is something in the image of φ that cannot be mapped to n/m in Q?”

A blank stare awaited Dr. Ferraro.

No, actually, it wasn’t a blank stare so much as an eye-watering gaze. He could have just asked me what two plus two was, and I wouldn’t have been able to answer him. He seemed to miss the eye-watering component of the gaze. He asked again: “What is something in the image of φ that cannot be mapped to by n/m in Q?” 

I merely gaped at him. The image of φ—what even was an image in math? Something to do with the mapping? Something to do with the codomain? 

“I don’t…” Was all I managed to eke out of the few brain cells seemingly left under my control. 

He took some pity on me, I guess, and said, “…it would be something irrational,” leaving just enough space at the beginning of his statement and between each of the words for me to jump in, in the unlikely event I would come to any glorious conclusions all on my own.

I didn’t. 

I looked down at my paper and nodded, noticing how the blue lines that usually ran parallel across the page had started to blur into a mess of segments which had moved firmly into the non-Euclidean part of geometry. 

“Right. Of course. That makes sense. I’ll just…write that down. I guess.” 

I never did. Tears which had been on the brink of falling for hours felt as though they were about to finally leak out there in my unsuspecting professor’s office. I put down the notebook containing its newly tangled lines abruptly and scrambled out with a jumbled “I need to use the restroom” thrown behind me. 

It’s funny that this is what my graduate school career had come to so quickly. Three weeks in and I was hysterically crying in a single-person restroom while questioning the choices that had brought me to this point. I love math. That’s how I got here—to get a degree in something I loved to do. 

Right?

Everyday I go to class, I do my homework, and I attend my tutoring hours. Everyday I stare up at symbols placed on the board in a way I do not quite fully understand, I attempt ridiculously difficult problem sets that contain words I have never seen before but am expected to know, and I struggle through tutoring and grading for a subject that I should have well in hand by now. Why am I here?

Everyone I talk to gives me reassurances. They know I’m smart. They know I’ll be fine. I feel like a cliche: a smart girl who doubts herself but will get through it in the end. Of course she will. Everyone says it. It’s the summary one finds running across the back of half the books in the young adult fiction section. There are variations, of course—maybe the girl in the story was in an accident, maybe a parent just died, maybe something unspeakable happened to her. Either way, they all end the same: she gets through it. Everyone knows, most of all the omniscient reader. Otherwise how would the character evolve? Otherwise why would anyone care?

I wish I had the amount of faith in myself that everyone else seems to have in me. 

My mom’s name is Faith. At home, among friends that know her, we have a running joke: Anytime somebody says, “Have faith,” or something similar, I respond, “Oh! She’s not here right now! But I can call her if you’d like? I’m pretty sure she’s at work, but I could definitely get her on the phone!” 

I imagine it’s not nearly as funny to the average person reading these words as normally is to us. I’m writing these words, and it’s not very funny to me right now. This week I’ve been told to have faith in myself or that others have faith in me countless times. This week I don’t think I’ve even made that joke once. 

I open my homework and it gives me anxiety in a way that homework never has before. Where there was once an achievable checklist of tasks to complete, I now see a bulleted list of reasons why I cannot seem to prevail. The words “group action,” “orthogonal,” and “orbit” mock me from my abstract algebra problem-set sheet. It’s probably because they know, as do I, that no matter how many times I ask, I will never get an explanation for their meaning that I am capable of understanding. Seven problems out of eleven I cannot complete this week. Next week will it be eleven?

God, I hope not. 

God, I feel alone. 

Today

“Does it ever get better?”

Well, that’s a tough question to answer. 

Yes, it does, but when a first-year graduate student is standing in the break room looking at you imploringly, it doesn’t feel like an adequate response. I thought hard about what I had needed to hear three years ago, about what would make her feel smart enough and competent enough and motivated enough to overcome the steep learning curve ahead of her. I didn’t want to just say, “I survived; you’ll do it too,” when I had written what amounted to a dramatic journal entry about how unhelpful those words were just three years earlier. 

So I gave her the best answer I could think of at that moment: “Yes, but slowly.”

It’s a completely inadequate response; I’m aware. But I think I’ve determined why that is. 

The words that I ultimately needed to hear were not ones that needed to be said to me, but rather words I needed to say to others—I needed to speak up.

You are not alone, and looking back, the thing that helped to improve my situation the most was talking about it to other people. This included sharing struggles with other graduate students, who it turned out were having the same problems as I was (and forming a study group to combat this!). This included talking to friends and family about the pressures I felt all around me, and them providing moral support in the form of assurances that graduate school did not define me. Finally, this included talking to a therapist, and learning the ways in which I could deal with stressors I had never encountered before. 

For me, therapy was something that caused quite an internal battle. I’m a smart girl; I’m driven; things aren’t even that bad; people have it way worse; why should I need to go to therapy? 

Thinking like that was the reason that I benefited from therapy in the first place: I was able to get perspective. I was able to understand that talking about your problems and working through them is for everyone, not just those who have it particularly badly.

I spent most of my two years at Wake Forest University in therapy, and I think I’ve told about five people in total. So, I guess I’m following my own advice right now: I’m speaking up.

Posted in Advice, Grad School, Grad student advice, Grad student life, Starting Grad Schol | 2 Comments

Running Office Hours

Posted on November 12, 2021 by Rohan Nair

Of all the advice I’ve received in my mathematical career, precisely none of it had anything to do with the subject of office hours. So here’s some advice I wish I’d been given on the matter:

  1. Figure out what sort of office hours you want to run.

In other words, how formal do you want your office hours to be? Some people prefer to dedicate their office hours exclusively to answering questions about course material and other academic topics. Others like to keep their office hours casual, so students can drop in and talk about things unrelated to course material if they want.

Formal office hours might work better if you’re expecting to see a lot of students and don’t have time to chat with each one individually. On the other hand, a more relaxed environment allows you to get to know your students better, and they might be more willing, for example, to give honest feedback about your course. I don’t think there’s a right answer here, but it’s definitely something worth thinking about before you move on to my next piece of advice.

  1. Make the purpose of office hours clear to your students.

It turns out a lot of students, especially first years, don’t really understand the purpose of office hours. Once you’ve figured out the type of office hours you want to hold, I suggest communicating to students very clearly what office hours are for and what sort of help they can expect to receive during those hours. I made the mistake earlier this semester of not following my own advice, and was surprised to find several students didn’t realize they could ask me questions about that day’s lecture during office hours. Won’t make that mistake again!

  1. Location is important!

As a graduate student I share my office with several other people, and on my busier days I might end up seeing 15 – 20 students over the course of two hours. This means it’s not really practical for me to hold my office hours in my actual office. Instead I use a large lecture room for my office hours. One advantage of this sort of room is that students feel comfortable sticking around for the entire 2 hours if required, since the room is never overcrowded/there’s always space for people to sit. I personally think students who stick around like this for office hours end up learning more, since they not only get to ask their own questions but can hear the answers to questions other students ask.

  1. Communicate

This is another piece of advice I need to follow more often – remind students every week when and where your office hours are! Even though my office hours are written on the course syllabus and mentioned frequently on my Canvas page, sometimes students just need confirmation that you will, in fact, be available at the allotted time and in the usual place that week.

  1. Think hard about timing and frequency

If you regularly assign homework due Wednesday afternoons, then most students aren’t going to want to attend your Wednesday evening office hours. Similarly, if you want to have morning or afternoon office hours, it’s likely that a good percentage of your students won’t be able to make these office hours regularly, which possibly commits you to holding multiple office hours a week.

This semester I’ve been holding office hours on Mondays from 6 to 8 pm. Mondays are a sweet spot for us since I usually have homework deadlines on Wednesday night, and 6 to 8 pm works for most students, including student athletes who tend to have late afternoon practice sessions. However, I still have students in lab courses who can’t make my usual office hours, so I’ve had to introduce a second set of office hours on Thursday evenings to accommodate. You might have to be flexible with timing and frequency, since office hours are no good if students can’t make them!

We tend to think of teaching as something that begins and ends in the classroom, but office hours can also be a hugely important part of the learning process for your students. I hope some of the advice in this article helps someone before they host their first office hours, and if you have you own advice, please leave a comment below!

Posted in Advice, Grad School, Math Teaching, Teaching | Comments Off on Running Office Hours

Mid Semester Reflection – The Midterm Struggle is Real

Posted on November 8, 2021 by Chanel Lee

Midterm season: two words that send a chill down any student’s spine. I have survived this Fall 2021 midterm season; however, I cannot say the same for my grades or mental health. The number of tears I have shed in the span of a few weeks while studying, taking exams, and contemplating my life is enough to flood the streets of Houston, TX for a day or two. This midterm season got the best of me, so let’s reflect on what led me to this point and my plan going forward.

Let’s start at the beginning, the beginning of 2020 that is. I am not the same person as I was before the pandemic. I completed my master’s program with no fanfare, no graduation, no closure. Then, I participated in a summer program to prepare me for a Ph.D. program that was supposed to be held—all expenses paid—at Brown University, but was switched to virtual instead. Due to a combination of the amount of work and immense screen time required via Zoom, I was burned out and Zoom-fatigued. After which, I entered the first year of my Ph.D. and was met with a toxic department. So, in addition to the normal first-year stressors—moving, classes, qualifying exams, coping with a new environment—I also had to deal with racism, sexism, misogynoir, sabotage, inappropriate behavior, and more. I knew I couldn’t stay, so I had to advocate to be transferred to my current department. The summer after my first year, I reviewed materials and did a bit of research, so it was a fairly relaxing summer. However, it was not remotely enough time to reflect on or even consider resolving my burnout and trauma.

Entering my second year this semester, I didn’t feel ready to take on another year and a new department. I came in skeptical of everything and everyone. I opted for the online option for everything I could, so I would rarely be on campus. I would feel scared to attend class and office hours. I didn’t feel comfortable reaching out to professors. I did all my assignments and studied alone. It felt like too much effort to spend time with friends even though I knew I would enjoy it. I would procrastinate on leaving my apartment to even buy meals or groceries. The bad experiences of my first year left me only feeling safe when I isolated myself.

In addition, I started the semester working on a statistical consulting project that went awry causing me to fall behind. Falling behind led to an unsustainable schedule loop. I have two assignments and prep work due each week. One assignment on Tuesday, one on Thursday, and my prep work is due Friday. Monday and Tuesday I work on my Tuesday assignment for around 10 hours, turn it in, and I’m exhausted. Wednesday and Thursday I work on my Thursday assignment for around 10 hours, turn it in, and I’m exhausted. Then, typically 12 – 2 AM on Friday (or Thursday night if you prefer), I work on my prework, complete it, and I’m exhausted. I have class on campus 9 – 11:30 AM on Friday, and I’m exhausted. At this point, I go back home and sleep, take Saturday off, and struggle to work on something on Sunday. Rinse and repeat. Did you notice a trend or two here? I found myself in a situation where I was completing my work, but I always felt behind and exhausted. So, when it came time for midterm season, I had nothing else to give. It also didn’t help that I had an assignment due the same week as the exam in each class.

In general, I have gripes with the concept of exams and their execution. I had a timed midterm in one class and a take-home midterm in the other. For the timed exam, I only finished two-thirds of my exam in the time allotted. I dislike timed exams because they add an unnecessary element of stress. It feels like the opportunity to show what you learned is dampened by requiring that you do it quickly. Especially when professors underestimate how long they believe it should take a student to complete their exam. For the take-home exam, the concept of a take-home exam is good, but in practice, they tend to be unpleasant. Giving students an extended time to work on an exam is great, but most professors use this extended time to extend the length and difficulty of the exam. My professor told us the exam is equivalent to a longer assignment. We receive a week to work on each assignment, but we were given about three days for the exam. Overall, exams are rough in general even if you are on top of your game, but they can be devastating when you are not.

Going forward, I am still trying and that is all the matters. I’ve reached out to professors to receive help, and I will try my best to turn this unfortunate semester around. However, due to me falling behind, I’ve realized the impact that your mental health can have on your work. I have many steps to take when it comes to unpacking my trauma not just from my first year as a Ph.D. student, but all my years in academia. In my academic career, it has always been go go go—next assignment, next exam, next semester, next degree. I’ve never really had a chance to really take a second to process my experiences, accomplishments, failures, and emotions surrounding these events. I didn’t realize how I carry past, good or bad, with me into everything I do, but I’m ready to make a change. It’s time for the healing to begin. Looks like I have my next therapy session topic lol.

How is your semester going so far? 🙂

Posted in Advice, Diversity, General, Grad School, Grad student advice, Grad student life, Mathematics in Society, Starting Grad Schol, Statistics | Comments Off on Mid Semester Reflection – The Midterm Struggle is Real

Revisiting Retention of Underrepresented Students

Posted on November 1, 2021 by ritibahl

Since the magnification of the Black Lives Matter movement in June 2020, there has been a surge in the production of diversity statements across all academic disciplines. Amongst these disciplines have been mathematics departments, which have historically been dominated by straight white cis men. On one hand, this has resulted in an increase in the conversations surrounding recruitment of diverse candidates for faculty, graduate and undergraduate positions. However, on another there has been a lack of conversation surrounding retention. In this post, I focus mainly on the implications of retention for underrepresented graduate students, however there are undoubtedly more conversations that need to happen within the field of mathematics.

For most graduate students, school requirements are often just the tip of the iceberg. Many of them have their own responsibilities, be it families, second-jobs or their primary research. Most graduate students experience some level of stress with managing their time between these different roles, and generally there is some wiggle room for students. For marginalized students there is often more stacked in this “typical” plate. Some examples are students who are on hormones, students with chronic illnesses, neurodivergent students and BIPOC students (especially in predominately-white spaces). Requiring marginalized students to produce and operate at the same frequency as their counterparts is where many departments often fall short.

Professors often use an “equality” approach to their teaching. This is where they provide the same set of rules for all students, but equality is not enough to retain diversity. This is where equity comes into play. Professors need to recognize the value in molding requirements for students. Expecting a student to function at 100% when they have a chronic illness is unrealistic and this is just one example. For students who are regularly trying to make it through the day without experiencing a micro-aggression, focusing on an in class exam can understandably be incredibly difficult. However, the chances of being allowed to reschedule or retake the exam are often non-existent, especially by professors who may not understand the gravity of the situation. This often results in an internalization of these issues, which only stacks on all the other requirements.

Until we have environments that are empathetic and flexible to the struggles of underrepresented students, realistically there will be no sustainable retention and consequently recruitment of diverse voices. Expecting underrepresented students to function in a system built only for cis white men is impractical and there has to be a uniform shift in the field of mathematics, at a graduate level and otherwise, for students to prosper.

To read more about this I recommend looking into trauma-informed teaching and learning. Writings on this topic include various techniques professors, teachers and students can take to allow students to prosper, while recognizing their various backgrounds and potential traumas.

Posted in Academic Skills, Advice, Diversity, General, Grad School, Mathematics in Society, Social Justice | Comments Off on Revisiting Retention of Underrepresented Students

A Conversation with Dr. Andrea Arauza Rivera

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Jasmine Camero

About five years ago when I was an undergraduate student at California State University, Fullerton, I had the opportunity to participate in an intensive summer program called Preparing Undergraduates through Mentoring towards Ph.D.’s (PUMP). PUMP is particularly aimed at minority students, women, and first-generation college students in the California State Universities studying mathematics. At this program, when I was a student that was too shy to ask any curious questions about analysis such as “who is this Cauchy guy and why do I keep hearing this name?” I met Andrea Arauza Rivera, who, at the time, was a Teaching Assistant for the program and a graduate student at University of California, Riverside (UCR). I learned a lot from her during that summer about analysis and linear algebra (and I finally found out who Cauchy was and why he is kind of a big deal) and five years later, I am still constantly learning from her–but now, it’s not just about math. At the time we met, I was an undergraduate student and she was a graduate student. Now a couple years later, we have both gotten a major upgrade: I am a graduate student and she is an Assistant Professor. She is a trailblazing Chicana who is paving the way for others like me. In the conversation that follows, you will see how integral it is to have an individual like Andrea as a part of the mathematical community.

Dr. Andrea Arauza Rivera

Jasmine: Tell me about yourself.

Andrea: My name is Andrea Arauza Rivera. I am a Chicana woman born in Guadalajara, Mexico. My parents emigrated to the United States when I was very young so I have some memories, but for the most part I grew up in the Central Valley of California. Once I graduated from high school, I went to Modesto Junior College (MJC) before transferring to Cal State Stanislaus and got my bachelor’s degree in math. Right after that, I went to UC Riverside for my Ph.D. I graduated from UCR in 2018 and then I went straight to Cal State East Bay where I am now an Assistant Professor. My work is in an area called Noncommutative Fractal Geometry. It is like the intersection of Functional Analysis with Fractal Geometry.

J: Tell me about your journey such as your experience in undergrad and how you ultimately decided to pursue graduate school.

A: I started at MJC as a nursing major because my mom had done some training to be a nurse while she was in Mexico, but it wasn’t really thought out because I don’t think I have what it takes to be a nurse. At some point, I took a calculus class and I saw the definition of a Riemann Sum and how you get integrals from taking the limit of sums and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. I was so excited about it and I thought it was genius. It was such a simple idea, but it was so incredible for me. At some point in that semester, I decided that I wanted to be a math major. I don’t think I had any particular career in mind, I just wanted to learn more. When I was an undergrad at Stanislaus, I took as many math classes as I could. I was also one of those students that actually read the emails that the chair of the department would send out and I got some about panels and conferences. I went to this conference at Sacramento State that gave students information about graduate school. I learned that you could go to graduate school for math and it would be free! To me, this felt like a route to financial independence. So I thought, why not? I like the subject and this seemed like a good way to get out of the Central Valley so I was very motivated. That summer, I did MSRI-UP and it was amazing. I loved it, I loved being there, and I loved being with a bunch of people who also loved math and wanted to talk about math all the time, but were still human beings. I really loved my experience there so I credit that program for putting me on the path to graduate school.

J: When you were in grad school, how was your transition from undergrad to a graduate program? 

A: It was tough. At Stanislaus, they taught me the fundamentals really well, so I had those down, and I learned how to learn. I hadn’t seen a lot of math. There were a lot of advanced topics that I had never seen before. When I got to grad school, I was in classes with people who had master’s degrees already, people who did their undergrad at other schools and took grad classes as undergrads and I felt that it was such a difference in what they seem to know and what I currently know. It seemed like such a divide so I was initially really worried. In a lot of the classes, it felt like my performance was based on the performance of my peers and it made me nervous about it. In the end, I knew how to learn, and I knew how to digest information. I knew that there were supposed to be growing pains so I wasn’t discouraged by that. Eventually we all get to a place where we don’t know the material already and I thought I’ve been confused and struggling this whole time so it’s not a big deal for me whereas for others it wasn’t like this so it was more of a struggle.

J: How did you deal with a lack of diversity in your program and being a woman of color in a PhD program in math?

A: When I was growing up, I was always around people of color, Latinx specifically, and a lot of them were women. So in undergrad, I was around brown women doing math all the time. It didn’t occur to me that it would be a problem until I was in grad school. For the first two years, I was so focused on getting through classes and quals, I wasn’t really focused on any other aspect. It wasn’t until my third year that I started feeling it. I looked around and realized that I only had one woman that I interact with on a daily basis and there’s no women of color. There’s maybe two people of color in the department who I talk to, but not other women. So the intersectionality of everything started to get overwhelming and isolating. I really wanted that feeling of community that I was missing.

J: Did you experience any imposter syndrome and if so, how did you deal with it?

A: I don’t know that I experienced it a ton. I went into those spaces and had a lot of self confidence. I felt like even if others thought I didn’t belong there, I’d make it so that I did belong there. I thought, I will make this space my space if it’s not already. I had this feeling like “of course I can do it, I can do anything”. There’s nothing they could tell me that I couldn’t do because I know how to work hard. I was ready to put in the work to get through it so I was super committed. It helped that I had a supportive family and that UCR gave me a nice financial package. I had things that helped me and gave me that time to be able to hustle through it. I felt like if anybody should be here, it should be me.

J: What was your motivation during grad school? What is it now? Has it changed or is it the same?

A: I think at the beginning of grad school I was motivated by math. I loved it and I wanted to learn more of it. That was a big thing at the beginning. And then I think it transitioned a bit. In 2016, a really traumatic thing happened to this country and it shook a lot of people including myself and I just thought that I needed to do something. I started feeling this sense that the country hated me… that’s just what it felt like when Donald Trump got elected. It felt like I needed to do something and I started to think about what I could do to be the most  helpful. I thought of dropping out and being an organizer and doing all this stuff. I figured out that I had already made it into this space that was already very exclusive and wasn’t welcoming to a lot of people like me and that was the place I could make the biggest impact because I was already there. I already had the skills and knowledge about the culture being in academia in general and that was where I could make the biggest impact. I think towards the latter half of grad school my motivation changed and became more political.

J: What do you think is the key to success in grad school?

A: Oh boy. People. People are the key to success in grad school. I mean that in two ways. People can be the key in helping you or people can be what screws you up. If you can build a community for yourself or you find a community–it can be different communities for what you need–people can help you during the hard times. In those difficult moments people are the ones that are going to get you through it. On the flip side of that, people can also screw things up for you. If you enter a space that’s hostile or doesn’t believe in you, that can make a big difference as well. Your decision for going to grad school needs to include the idea that “are the people here going to support me? Are they going to be a positive influence for me?” So I think people are the key.

J: What are your long term goals?

A: I want to build a legacy that I am proud of. That really encompasses how I feel as a human being and what I do in my career.

J: What is your favorite thing about what you do now?

A: The interactions I get to have with other people and my colleagues. I do this job for the interaction I get to have with the students. It’s an honor and a responsibility that I’ve been trusted with. I get to be their teacher and it’s such a sacred job to have. To be someone who has knowledge and shares it with other people. I am grateful that they trust me with it and that I get to be the person in the room with them while they have this “ah ha” moment. I really think it’s an honor to be a teacher. That particular feeling I don’t think I can get from anything else.

J: What advice do you have for current math PhD students?

A: Find your people. People can make all the difference. Even if people are far away they can still be your people. I really think you need a community. When I got to grad school I thought I had to do it all by myself, but I quickly figured out how important it was to have friends who you could connect with on a human level. Find your people and community. 

Posted in Advice, Diversity, First-generation, Grad School, Grad student advice, Grad student life, Interview, Interviews, Math Teaching, Mathematicians, Mathematics in Society, Social Justice, Starting Grad Schol, Teaching | Comments Off on A Conversation with Dr. Andrea Arauza Rivera