Chase Colton said he was eager for graduate school after two and a half years working at a restaurant.
“It was terrible,” Colton said. “I was in the dish pit — throwing dishes out — I get this call and I don’t recognize the number.”
The call came from Idaho’s area code.
“So he calls me, and I pick up the phone, and I’m like ‘hello?’ And he’s like ‘Hi Chase, this is Daniel Ross at the University of Idaho.'” Colton said. “I partied that night for sure.”
Colton, a creative writing Master of Fine Arts student, moved into a building where he was surrounded by other MFA students who reached out to him.
“And they took me in as one of their own,” Colton said. “And quite literally fed me. And just made sure I was OK and introduced me to people, (it) really became like home.”
Colton said the graduate school experience depends on whether the student has a teaching assistant position.
“If you teach, not only are you financially better off … socially you’re better off,” Colton said. “You’re around people all the time. Those who are outside that teaching bubble are alienated and ostracized to a certain degree.”
Colton did not teach his first year, and became an unofficial representative of the non-TA grad students, he said.
“I was voicing my complaints whereas I think others hadn’t in the past,” Colton said. “Then they offered me a TA-ship and suddenly I’m one of the wicked, you know?”
Colton said the workload is an enormous step up from his senior year, but it comes in the form fewer, but longer, papers.
“You’re going to be doing a lot of reading, a lot of writing,” Colton said. “Your apartment’s going to fall apart. You’re going to stop doing your dishes, stop buying groceries — especially during finals.”
Colton said grad school is about finding more time than he ever thought possible.
“If nothing else, graduate school will teach you discipline,” Colton said. “You can’t be good at anything without it.”
High expectations, field research and hauling your housing behind your truck — graduate school came with a set of challenges all its own for student Bryan Stevens.
Stevens said he knew as a wildlife resources undergraduate that he wanted to go on to grad school so he could do research.
“It’s like working with your professor to come up with a project, then kind of develop a research framework of how to try to solve this problem,” Stevens said. “The primary purpose of a higher degree in a natural resource field is to do research that’s scientifically valid.”
Stevens worked on a project that analyzed the impact of fences on greater sage grouse in southern Idaho.
“I worked with my adviser to narrow down the specific objectives of the project,” Stevens said.
Next, the researcher must determine how to reach those objectives.
“How do we answer these questions?” Stevens said. “What methods (should) we use to answer these questions?”
The project evolved and developed as he discussed it with his adviser.
Stevens spent two spring semesters doing fieldwork and gathering data to be analyzed and recorded. Stevens’ research sites were spread across about 249 miles in southern Idaho.
“That made my project a lot more logistically difficult then a lot of wildlife projects,” Stevens said. “I had an Idaho Fish and Game truck and camper and would pull a camper from site to site and live with my technicians.”
Stevens experienced winter to spring conditions in a high desert.
“Very little running water,” Stevens said. “It was roughing it. It was fun really.”
Stevens was also separated from his wife for long periods.
“While I was doing field work, my wife was here in Moscow going to school,” Stevens said. “I was in southern Idaho 10 to 12 hours away for months at a time. That was very personally challenging.”
Associate dean of the College of Graduate Studies Jerry McMurtry said the graduate school is a valuable part of the UI campus.
“Really, the community (is) built in the departments,” McMurtry said. “It’s a small enough university that the faculty in those departments really take grad students seriously and really do a good job mentoring them.”
The students have a chance to develop career skills through TA-ships and research assistant opportunities, he said.
“Oftentimes, we teach as we were taught, and oftentimes that’s not the best way to do it,” McMurtry said. “In the College of Gradate Studies, we have a course in college teaching and learning, and students that chose to take that often are TAs who want to practice and develop better pedagogical skills.”
For a student looking to work in academia, a TA-ship is a place to improve teaching skills, he said.
“If they are a research assistant, that really helps get them into the laboratory and allows them an opportunity to work very in depth on projects – they can be grant funded, they can be underneath another professor, they can be interdisciplinary.”
The Graduate and Professional Student Association promotes chances for the students to meet and network with students from other disciplines, McMurtry said.
“Work towards even some interdisciplinary understandings where students can take a look at what they are doing in their program – talk to a student in another program, and try and synthesis something new,” McMurtry said. “Bringing those two together.”
Bryce Blankenship moved from Missouri to North Idaho to start gradate school with the UI department of philosophy in August 2011.
“As listed on the website, they have a joint program with Washington State University, and they have an emphasis in environmental philosophy through University of Idaho,” Blankenship said.
When Blankenship visited Moscow, he liked the town and the department, so he chose UI, he said.
For the two years between his graduation and grad school, Blankenship had managed a coffee shop in Kansas City, Missouri.
“With a degree in philosophy and communications, … I wasn’t really interested in doing business-y sorts of things,” Blankenship said. “I wanted to pursue something that interested me. … the questions that it asks (and) the dialogues that come about of those questions.”
Blankenship said grad classes meet for less time a week, but demand a deeper commitment to the material.
“It was all dependent on you becoming familiar with the material, presenting good work, and showing that you’ve engaged with the material at a very insightful level,” Blankenship said. “Going to class prepared.”
Blankenship said he always has some paper or project his is working on over several weeks or months.
Blankenship TA-ed the 103 Ethical Thinking course for the fall semester, and is currently TA-ing for spring.
“I was expecting to just grade and help out, but I did not expect to lead full classroom discussions,” Blankenship said. “It was super rewarding. Philosophy 103’s a required course for so many people that a lot of them don’t want to take it.”
Blankenship said he enjoys watching his students understand how the issues they are discussing in class connect to their current lives.
“It was really neat,” Blankenship said. “Having a strong contingent of folks come up to my office just to talk–to talk about the material–to better understand what we are talking about.”
TA-ing is time consuming – preparing lectures, writing tests, grading tests, grading papers.
“But it’s worth it,” Blankenship said.
Joanna Wilson can be reached at [email protected]