My advice to students for website as follows

In response to the question "what advice would you give to incoming graduate students?" current graduate students responded with sometimes lengthy, sometimes brief words of wisdom. The following lists and essays were written by current graduate students (Spring 2004). The authors at the time of writing occupied differential spaces within the department: differing in sub-field, length of time associated with University of Houston, undergraduate training, and are diverse in demographic features (age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc). Their advice is invaluable and far easier to read than the graduate handbook (but read that, too).

One of the most helpful things I did was to meet with a professor during the summer before I

entered the graduate program.  I knew that I was interested in Dr. Brown's work, but wasn't sure

how I would fit in since I really wasn't interested in archaeology.  Anyway, we met and talked and that

helped me to decide to come to UH.  SO, by the time I actually started school, I already knew someone on staff in

the department.  This was especially helpful for me since I did not attend this university as an

undergraduate.

Another helpful factor for me was asking lots of questions.  It seems that different people on staff

had different answers to the same questions.  It was in the asking and talking that I felt I finally got to the

correct answers say about, graduate requirements, assistantships, etc.

Another helpful factor was having someone like [an experienced current graduate student] around.

Her experience in the program and overall personality has certainly been appreciated.  It would be

nice if perhaps graduate students in the first semester could pair up with a student who has at least

a year in the program.

Too many people approach graduate school as just a continuation of undergraduate. This is really counterproductive. You should use your undergraduate years to take a variety of classes in order to develop some sort of focus on where your interests lie. You can then come into graduate school with at least an idea of what field you want to concentrate in. Even better, talk to the professor you’re going to be primarily working with and try to set up a thesis topic before you even start graduate classes. This will save you a lot of time and money, rather than waiting until the end of your graduate coursework and realizing that you have no idea what you want to do a thesis on. By coming into the program with a thesis topic, or at least knowing your subfield, you can concentrate on classes that will be of immediate benefit to your eventual thesis. With the change to require students to take the Anthropological Methods course early [which helps prepares you to write your thesis proposal] students are now facing this decision sooner in their program, and will help them focus their time and energy towards the goal of a thesis – isn’t that why you’re in grad school anyway? If not, why are you here?

The format of graduate classes is different, and requires much more self-motivation, especially in finding time to read. Whereas many undergrads pride themselves on never reading the required texts for courses, if you try that in grad school, you’re in for a rude awakening in seminars where you are expected to participate in the discussions and/or lead the discussion. Critical thinking skills are a necessity.

Graduate advising in the Anthropology department has not always been as thorough as it should have…although, some changes are being made. Regardless of the quality of advising, every student is responsible for their own plan and keeping up with what they’ve taken and/or need to take, which courses are required, which ones count as Comp. courses, the order that things need to be done in , etc. Get a copy of the department’s Graduate Program and read it! You can mark off the courses you’ve taken or use the extra pages in the back to list course by each semester. Also, get a copy of the university’s graduate handbook and read it as well - it has a lot of information beyond what pertains specifically to the department. This is your degree – take responsibility for keeping up with it.

In the past, comps [Comprehensive Examinations] have been treated by advanced graduate students as some big, dark, scary secret to terrorize the rest of the graduate populace with. This is bullshit. Yes, they do seem daunting, but, you’re at the graduate level now - if you’ve attended classes, read the material, and participated in discussions, you should be able to handle this. It’s an advanced and extended version of an essay type comprehensive final – 3 days, 3 hours each day, 1 question/subfield per day. Everyone has to comp in Anthropological Theory, their particular subfield, and one alternate seminar. You want to do REALLY well in your subfield. You have a good idea of what the question is ahead of time, and you have time to formulate an idea of what your answer will be. Different study techniques work for different people. I wrote down everything I could think of pertaining to the question, then went back into my notes and filled in the missing spots. Completely re-reading all of the books was out of the question, so I relied on the handouts from each student’s discussion of the material in class – yes, save those! I then re-wrote my answer, making sure that I was able to write all I wanted to in the allotted time…you do not want to not finish, or to finish too early - finishing a comp in an hour is a really bad thing. It’s also a good idea to give yourself time at the end to re-read your paper – it’s hard for your hand to keep up with your brain, and you’ll generally find a number of things that need to have some minor changes to make sense – also, do not use your usual abbreviations that you would use in taking notes. The professors have to read them – legibility is required and decent grammar is always a plus. Read over an outline the morning of the test, just to make sure you can make the essay flow from one salient point to the next. Don’t cram the night before – get a good night’s rest. If it’s not in your head by that point, you’re not going to be able to pull it out of your ass on comp day.