What Can You Do?

• “Everyone else just gets it”

Lots of our community said that they wish they had known sooner that it is ok to not understand everything, to feel overwhelmed, and to feel lost listening to conference talks. There is still very much an assumption that academics “know everything”.

What can you do?
The good news here is that most of the time students feel more included just by hearing that academics/other students are feeling lost too. Be open in talking with students about how they are not expected to understand everything, especially at conferences where talk topics can be very varied.

Students said that their sense of belonging was helped by the informal conversations they had with other academics. Being invited to coffee mornings and having lunches in a department means that there is more opportunity for these chats and overall improves a student’s feeling of being a part of the team.

What can you do?
Make sure to communicate expectations with your students, e.g. the expected frequency of meetings and how you like to give feedback. Again, being open about how you work allows students to develop a routine that works for them and advocate for themselves about their needs. For example, talking about a feedback structure opens the conversation for any accessibility concerns.

• The Invisible Workload starts small

We spoke previously about the disproportionate amount of service work that women do in a department, and PhD students report the same issue. Always being the one asked to volunteer to work at the careers fair, organising student welcome events, sound familiar? If it’s already trained in and accepted as the norm at PhD level, how do we expect it to be any different when moving up the chain? We recommend departments track service jobs done at PhD level and highlight any discrepancies.

A ton of feathers is still a ton
All of these tiny jobs, booking the meeting room, taking meeting minutes, spending half an hour talking to a student who wants to drop out, accumulate and take away significant time from research.

Lots of students report feeling like their service jobs to the university are worthwhile and fear that if they did not volunteer, no-one would.

• The Academic Lifestyle

Many have worries around starting a family when there is frequently the need to move with an academic career. This problem is amplified if you have a partner who is also an academic.