5 Things You Need to Know Before Attending Global Strategic Communications Creative Track Master’s Degree

By: Joseph Valancy

Graduate school is an intimidating and challenging prospect to undertake. It’s pass with flying colors or fail miserably and lose everything you’ve built up as you spiral woefully into debt. So no pressure. As long as you know these five key things to expect while in graduate school, you’ll be able to rest assured knowing that you were prepared for everything.

1. Classes are Assigned

Remember those fun years of undergraduate school where you had the illusion of power to select your own schedule? If you didn’t want a particular class at a particular time, you could always rush to admissions and hope that you could jump on another class that wasn’t already filled up on a first come-first serve scenario. Fortunately, graduate school removes all of this hassle, assigning all required classes for you and preventing both schedule conflicts and unreasonably timed classes.

2. Communication is Everything

Sure, there were those fun lecture classes in giant auditoriums with hundreds of students that could “theoretically” be skipped because the professor really couldn’t personally know that many students. In graduate school, classes are tiny and personal. You need to actively communicate with the professor and other students to keep up with the work. Read every email and all forms of communication and feedback.

Kiss your anonymity goodbye and embrace the fact that the professor knows you. Use this to your advantage. She or he wants you to succeed in this program, and if they personally know that you are the honest and hardworking type, they usually will let a few mistakes or slip-ups on your part slide.

3. Positive Social Relationships are a Must

No, I don’t mean little, meaningless distractions like love and romance; I mean the interactions you have with your peers. In undergraduate school, if you didn’t like someone for any reason in particular, you potentially only had one class in one semester with them, and probably would never see them again. Not so in graduate school.

The same faces will pop up in every class, and because classes are assigned, you are all but guaranteed to see them again on a regular basis for the rest of your graduate years. It is vital that you stay on good terms with everyone. Don’t make any enemies or you’ll have another thing to worry about on top of your schoolwork.

Furthermore, there is way more group work than in undergraduate school, making friendly and reliable companions a must. Likewise, having positive personal relationships works in the other direction. Watch the backs of your fellow graduate students and they will watch yours. What goes around comes around, and you will find yourself helped out of binds by your generous classmates.

4. There Will Always be a Weakest Link

Given that there is a lot of aforementioned group work, you will find yourself working together with a lot of people on a regular basis, and no matter how much you try to synergize with your peers, there will always be at least one person who fails to pull their weight.

Plan ahead for this, even if you don’t have a weak link in your group, always approach group projects as if you are the keystone everyone is relying on. If you’re in a four-person group, psych yourself up to do 40% of the work, if it’s five people, do 30%, and if it’s three people, do 39.999% (repeating, of course). When you approach group projects with this mentality, it becomes easier to get things done for both you and your group-mates.

5. You Can Never be Prepared

Everything I said here can only take you so far. There are always unknowns in this world, but relax, you’re in the same boat as all of your peers. No one will truly be prepared for everything, and hardships will be endured. Hopefully it will all help prepare you for the world outside academic achievement.

So just relax and don’t fight the waves of change and chaos that surround you. As long as you remember these five pieces of helpful advice, you have nothing to worry about because you will always be prepared.

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