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Writer's pictureSarah Davis

Strategies Are (Probably) Not The Answer to Your Grad School Problems

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the benefits of self-regulating your learning for graduate students. I outlined the four steps of self-regulated learning: tasks, goals, strategies, and metacognition (monitor, evaluate, and adapt).


Today, I’m going to elaborate more on the third step, strategies.


The third step? Shouldn’t I be starting with step one?


Maybe.


But there are two reasons why I want to start with step three.


First of all, assigning steps to self-regulated learning is more of a formality rather than a requirement. What do I mean by that?


I like talking about self-regulated learning as having four steps so it provides a framework and potentially a step-by-step process that grad students can follow. However, self-regulated learning when it’s really happening is automatic and so it may not contain all four steps, it may jump around between the steps, or it may skip steps altogether.


Second, in order to explain why self-regulating your learning in grad school can be so helpful and important, I need to start with the strategies.


I’ve worked with so many grad students who think, and have even thought this myself, that if they just need to find the perfect strategy and then everything will be better. They’ll be able to manage their time, write their thesis, give a conference presentation, have effective meetings with their advisor, get an interview for their dream job, etc.

When we don't find strategies that work, we can be left feeling frustrated, unmotivated, and discouraged and wondering what is wrong with us.

Sound familiar? So, why do we think that strategies are where we always need to start?

I don’t know all the reasons we do this, but I want to show you why it’s problematic to focus on strategies when you’re facing a challenge.


Imagine you are sitting in front of your computer. It’s 9:00 am on Monday morning and you are feeling pretty happy with yourself that you are actually sitting down and ready to work on your thesis.


You open up your thesis document and scroll down to where you left off last week.


The cursor flashes. Again, and again, and again.


You pull out your phone to check if your friend messaged back about lunch. They didn’t, but you notice an email come in about a scholarship you applied for.


You pull that up (you’re waitlisted for the scholarship) and then spend the next ten minutes reading the various emails from the listservs you are on as a grad student, scanning for any TA or RA jobs or anything else of interest since now you’re a bit focused on money.


When your attention is back on your thesis document, you scroll up a page and read what you wrote last week.


Your phone vibrates and you check it again. It is your friend finally, and you spend a few minutes messaging back and forth.


You realize that it’s almost 9:45 am and you haven’t done any writing yet on your thesis.


“Okay, that’s it,” you mutter out loud. You decide to need to find a strategy that limits distractions on your phone so you read Reddit for a bit finding the best one.


Your phone needs an update before you can download the app that has a free 7 day trial. You set a reminder in your calendar to either cancel or pay in 6 days. Then you look at your email again and check some news sites before blocking all non-essential apps from your phone (but not before you send a few more messages letting people know you won’t be responding to messages between 9 and 5 anymore).


By the time you return to your thesis document, it’s now 10:30 am and the cursor keeps blinking at you.


You sit for a few minutes and decide to look up some thesis writing strategies….


See where I’m going here?

If this sounds familiar because you’ve been here before, not being able to find strategies that work can leave us frustrated, unmotivated, and discouraged. We can feel like we’re not making any progress and that there is something wrong with us because everyone else seems to be making progress but us.


This is the real problem with focusing on strategies is that when you are using ineffective strategies for certain situations OR the strategies you’re choosing are not targeting your goals or the task, you are the one that often suffers.


So, don’t stop using strategies. In fact, it can be helpful to actually write down the strategies you are working that do help. Talk to others to find out strategies they use for similar situations.


How can you choose better strategies?


First, you may want to review my post on self-regulated learning.


Next, remember that the most effective and efficient strategies target a specific goal.


And goals can only be specific if you understand what it is you are doing, aka the task.


Are you getting why I talk about self-regulated learning as a cycle? I'll talk more about it in future blog posts.


I hope this helped you see why focusing on strategies can be problematic, and why tasks and goals are often the better place to start when you’re struggling.


If what I’m writing is resonating with you, these are the types of things we talk about in The Club and we’d love for you to join us.


And, look for future blogs on goals and tasks in the coming weeks!


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