Presentation is everything in graduate school; from how you present yourself to how you present your research. Every move you make will have an effect on where you end up after all is said and done. If you want to land that big job, you have to make a lasting impression. At least, that is what I have been told.
As I work through my last semester of PhD candidacy, I reflect on the cost of my education. Soon, I will enter repayment status on the $150,000.00 in loans it has costed to obtain my coveted PhD in Psychology. I realize now why doctors and lawyers charge so much money for their services – we HAVE to. I am graduating with a mortgage, for all intents and purposes!
When I think about what could have made my life easier throughout this process, I imagine how nice it would have been to have a toolbox of sorts of handy software and sites that could make me look better than I feel (3 to 4 hours a night of sleeping just isn’t cutting it anymore when you are a single mom and have three jobs in addition to grad school) and do justice to my hard work (I don’t want my work to look like I am living on 3 to 4 hours of sleep in addition to being a single mom with 3 jobs and grad school). As luck would have it for others who may stumble upon this blog, I am about to reveal some useful tools that have worked for me by saving time and creating professional looking documents. Of course, as a starving graduate student, many of these tools are free. Although I come from the fields of psychology and anthropology, I am sure that those of you in other disciplines will find something useful here as well.
The Basics
To begin with the most obvious, you need Microsoft Word and Excel, which means you have to invest in Microsoft Office. There’s no way around this one and if you don’t have these programs, you don’t need to be in grad school. Treat yourself to a good new laptop and it will come with the basics already installed. You can’t be in grad school nowadays without a laptop. At least I can’t imagine being without one. Also, make sure you have wireless capabilities and high speed internet. With the amount of research you will have to do, it is simply impractical to not have these tools. I also recommend using thumb drives as opposed to CDs for downloading data. They cost more, but in the long run they are worth it. They are small and can carry a lot of information. I usually get the ones with 2 GB of memory. Otherwise you will end up with numerous thumb drives with less memory. The downside is that you can’t write on thumbs so you know what is inside like you can a CD. Trust me, I learned this from experience. I had thumbdrives all over the place with my research on them and I had to stick them in the computer to remember what is on each one. I later started to color code them. I now know that my slick little polished stainless steel thumb has my coveted dissertation on it. My purple one has my main references. My blue one has all of the forms and paperwork that I need to be official (it just occurred to me that perhaps that one should have been red), and well, you get the picture. You’ll have to find a system that works for you. Oh, and while I am stating the obvious, do yourself a favor and get a good surge protector. Put one on your whole house. And then get one that goes between your computer and the wall outlet. Get another one you can carry with you and your laptop and make it a habit of plugging into that first whenever you plug into the wall. You will save yourself a lot of unnecesary grief in the future if you heed my simple advice.
Here are some links to books that may prove useful.
Must have software if you have the cash:
Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.0
To make PDF document without the expenditure of Adobe Acrobat Professional, try this:
Free necessary software:
Adobe Acrobat Reader for reading PDF files. Download the free Reader here: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Create Professional Looking Documents
If you are smart, and no doubt you are otherwise you wouldn’t be in grad school, you will know early on where you want to develop your expertise. Write every paper and make every assignment about that topic. Learn about it from every angle. Trust me, this will pay off when you get to the dissertation process. You will have both the breadth and depth of knowledge necessary to call yourself an expert about something, you will have a great foundation for references, and you will have a number of potentially publishable articles already written. Writing and publishing is one of the best ways to gain credibility. Credibility will get you hired. Which leads me of course to the topic of scientific writing. Graduate school requires an intimate knowledge of APA style, so bookmark the site and get the publication manual. These are necessary evils.
The American Psychological Association
Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
There are a couple of programs that you can purchase that automatically set your document into APA style for you. Early on I found the APA style helper to be helpful. When writing my thesis, however, I found it to be more bothersome than helpful because each school has its own formatting requirements that may or may not be consistent with the software’s autoformatting. I found problems with pagination and margins. In order to bind your thesis and dissertation, the margins will need to be set wider, for example. So, it is easier to use the template provided by my school with these things already set in place, plus it is free. And as starving grad students, we like free.:)
In Case of the Unthinkable
I believe that a requirement for all grad students in their introductory professional development courses should be to obtain (or better yet be provided with, but I admit I am a dreamer), a program to retrieve lost data. There is no greater horror of horrors than losing your thesis or dissertation proposal, or any major research project or paper after spending hours upon hours of researching, writing, editing, and rewriting.
Here are a couple of programs that can help:
In case the unthinkable happens, like your research has been accidentally deleted by a virus attack or power failure (even if your recycle bin has been emptied), this is an inexpensive and easy-to-use yet powerful file undelete solution for FAT and NTFS file systems. R-Undelete can undelete files on any valid logical disks visible by the host OS. This means all may not be lost. It cannot, however, undelete files on damaged or deleted volumes or in the case of hard drive repartitioning (although the R-Studio can; it is available at the same website). The newest version, R-Undelete 2.0 is integrated into Windows Explorer shell and all undelete and file recovery functions are accessible from Windows Explorer, making it even easier to use. The cost is $29.99 to $54.99, depending on the version that is appropriate for your operating system. And, a demo version is available so if you are strapped for cash at the time of the unthinkable, and your file is not larger than 64KB, you can download the demo and use it for free. There is a way to recover lost files larger than 64KB if needed with the demo, but it requires some creative maneuvering and can be intimidating for the average computer user. The directions for how to do so are on the website.
RecoverMyFiles is a powerful document recovery tool. It recovers deleted, lost and hidden Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher and Visio documents. The software is simple to use, thanks to its Wizard mode or a feature rich Advanced mode. This one runs on Windows XP and saves old documents even after they’ve been sent to the Recycle Bin, gets back documents lost after a reformatting, deletion, or crash, recovers documents that standard undeletes can never recover, and is compatible with all Windows file systems including FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS. It retails for $49.95.
The Dreaded Statistics
I would be remiss if I did not address statistics in this blog and to share a little of what I have found to make life a little easier for the average grad student. Unfortunately, statistics are unavoidable in grad school but thanks to some cool little tools, they needn’t be as feared as they are. For quick calculations, there are some online calculators that work like any other calculator on your computer. The only catch is that you have to know what data to input and you have to be able to interpret the output. Yes, you still have to pay attention in class, and you still have to learn statistics.
To take some of the sting out of stats, try these:
http://www.stat-help.com/excel.pdf This is a document that provides a basic introduction to Microsoft Excel from the point of view of the researcher. Excel is a versatile and often overlooked program that can be useful in the research process.
http://davidmlane.com/hyperstat/index.html HyperStat Online is an online statistics book with links to other statistics resources on the web. Includes a search engine, links to other statistical resources and links to statistical humor (yes, there is such an animal)!
http://www.stat-help.com/intro.pdf. Introductory Statistics Notes by Jamie DeCoster, 1998. This document provides an introduction to basic statistical concepts.
http://www.stat-help.com. Free Statistical Consulting Over the Internet. Free online help with data analysis!
Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to assist in statistical calculations.
Here are some online statistical calculators:
Analysis Lab. Online statistical calculator that performs limited statistical functions including descriptives, t-test/confidence intervals, box plots, histograms, ANOVA, chi-square, and more.
Sample size calculator from the UCLA Department of Statistics.
A Final Note
One thing I am noticing in my current search for a potential position following graduation (yes, I see the rainbow!) is that many entry level research positions require 2 to five years of experience. While I find this to be quite the oxymoron in terms of situations, I recommend getting as much experience as possible while in school. In addition to internships, volunteering for research is a good idea.
Good luck!
Denise Alvarado
