Ayesha,

I agree that with the great influence of social media on us we somehow want to extend it to every aspect of our daily life. However, using Facebook or Instagram for academic purposes has its own disadvantages. Mixing the private life with professional career has negative consequences.

I am sure we all PhD students have similar concerns as you. The way I look to the PhD is like a job I got for a 3-4 year period which was my own choice, it is happy on the sense that it is what I choose to do. Under this perspective, I question myself permanently if a regular person at any job is always happy or sad with their job?. Well, for sure not sad, at least the majority, a good amount will be happy, and maybe a good number of people will feel between happy and satisfied with their job; so, one of the last two is the path where I want to be while doing the PhD and after that. It is a constant battle in my brain until get used to this idea, but at least keeping this as a goal gives me hope.

There's definitely room for improvement in student surveys, I know the ones I have taken in the past were only interested in how I rated the professor on whatever that department thought was buzz-worthy.

There's definitely room for improvement in student surveys, I know the ones I have taken in the past were only interested in how I rated the professor on whatever that department thought was buzz-worthy.

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Great job!!
You have a good idea with the implementation of more loan forgiveness programs to help those going into certain careers that do not have high starting salaries.

Great post.
Ahh I remember that class. I believe that refining the way we communicate is imperative to the advancement of our different fields of study in the future. Better communication well support more interdisciplinary collaborative and innovate discoveries..

I agree! Communication is crucially important. I too love the quote you stated above - we have to be able to explain what we do and WHY...to anyone. At any time. It think it's far too easy to get wrapped up in what's going on and forget about the importance of outreach - not just that outreach exists but HOW to actually disseminate that information to others in a useful and meaningful way.

I agree with you completely – especially in contexts that prevent more hands-on and experiential opportunities. However, I think that providing students with actual hands-on opportunities ON the farm will also prove to be a crucially important part of their education. Especially with the changing demographics of agricultural students (i.e. coming from non-rural non-agricultural backgrounds), it is crucially important that those types of experiences be provided, and not assumed.