In graduate school, you need to learn to manage your time or you might succumb to the pressure.

As a first generation college student, I never knew that graduate school was an option for me. I knew vaguely what it was, as so many Iranians have PhDs and master’s degrees in my community, but maybe what I’m really getting at is that I never knew it was an option for kids like me. A first gen college student from Baltimore who everyone thought was smart, but never had good grades until I went to college. But then I got my undergraduate degree, had multiple professors tell me I’m brilliant and need to go to grad school, and in the middle of my gap year, I decided to take a chance and apply.

I didn’t get into the PhD program I wanted, but I ended up in an interdisciplinary master’s program at Towson University that really ended up suiting my interests and needs. But as someone who paid my way through graduate school—my program was surprisingly affordable for a master’s degree, which is partially why I chose it—I needed to learn time management. I worked full-time and attended classes in the evenings, which led to a lot of stress and sleepless nights sometimes. But it was worth it, because I am graduating with no debt from this program and will have the finances to pay most of my undergraduate loans—with the help of the fact I lived with my parents all through grad school.

Here are some valuable lessons I learned throughout my first year of graduate school.

If you work a job where there are a lot of slow moments, use them.

I worked a job on campus, which means that I had the flexibility in my schedule to take night classes after being on campus all day. A lot of people at my school also end up working full-time jobs and attending classes at night, so this is a normal schedule for us. I worked at the Career Center on campus and edited resumes/cover letters for students, which are done by appointment. Basically, at the beginning and the end of the semester, no one ends up really coming in to use our services, which means we have the time for ourselves until a walk-in might appear.

So what I would do during this kinds of breaks, whether short or extended, is devote it to getting chunks of work done. I didn’t do the same routine every time this happened—I conquered whatever my to-do list was needing most at that time. I ended up reading a lot of my readings, as I had about five hundred pages of readings a week, during this time. When the work was dwindling down and I just had projects to do at the end of the semester, I used this time to catch up on my freelance writing work and the blog posts I needed to do in advance.

Get used to late nights or early mornings.

I don’t go to a school where I can easily access the library, so one of the core things I ended up doing was making my workspace really comfortable at home. My classes would sometimes end at 9 PM, I would drive thirty minutes home, and then I would come home, eat some food, drink some tea, and then set down my computer at my desk to plug away at the work I needed to do for the next couple of days. Late nights seem like a staple for the tired graduate student, but there are people who find themselves so much more productive when they wake up early. That’s not me—I’m very much a night owl.

Find out what works best for you and find out your most productive hours. I think some people can realize that they’re not constantly productive at certain hours, and I’m a firm believer in that you’re only productive for a limited amount of hours per day. For some people, that’s eight hours. Others, four. For me it's about five hours depending on what kind of day it is, but one you figure out your own strengths, you’ll nail down your schedule and when to get things done.

Humanities students need to learn to not read everything.

My professors constantly bring this up because it’s true—no one is expecting you to read all of the readings per class word for word. I’m given about five hundred pages a week and I’m even reading an entire book per week sometimes. It would be absolutely insane if I sat down and read all of this constantly for every single word on the page—do not do that. A big part about research in the humanities and trying to figure out what the thesis and key points are, then dissecting what you need from that. You will ultimately know the point of the readings and why you’re reading them, so find the information most important to you.

For example, if you’re looking into material culture in South Korea in the post-war era, then maybe you don’t need to fully read the context of the Joseon era presented in chapter 1. Get down the core ideas through skimming, then go to the section you really need. You don’t need to be an expect on everything immediately!

Know your limits.

I know sometimes it feels like you need to do everything. Publish five papers, become an entrepreneur or TikTok icon, and managing all the professional connections with visiting professors or lecturers. You don’t need to do it all sometimes. Burnout and mental health are discussions that are only just coming up in the graduate school discussions, and sometimes you simply need to step away from it for a bit. There were some nights where I just didn’t feel like doing work after class and went to bed. And that’s fine. Because I was good at time management and ended up getting ahead of schedule, I wasn’t ever really behind. Once you nail down your schedule, you don’t need to be working so hard. It’ll be okay!

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