PhD Interviews

How I found colleague-friendships now entering their second decade...

Congratulations! You are a finalist for a coveted PhD program! You are called in for an interview. Maybe you’ll be flown into campus for a several day orientation. Maybe you’re feeling excited but the kind where you’re also wracked with anxiety with tinges of elation. In a frantic rush, you maybe skimming publications of all the faculty members you are bound to meet, polishing your elevator pitch. And of course, preparing to meet your potential supervisor. Throughout all of this, don’t forget—this is a prime opportunity to also make new friends with your generational cohort.

Let me start by stating that I almost enrolled in the University of Minnesota for my PhD program. I was so close to accepting. My supervisor was dynamite. The cohort was clearly full of potential synergies. The department clearly had a vested interest in their students’ intellectual growth. They felt accessible but importantly, personable. When I told my friend, who was in the same M.A. cohort as me what I experienced, his response was, “This is how geniuses are made.”

Despite the fact that I knew that my friend was right, I declined to pursue my studies in the American tundra. My decision to stay at the University of Toronto for my doctoral degree was not an easy one. That’s a post for another day. But, it’s worth highlighting that I still talk to other Ph.D. prospectives that I met that weekend. More recently—roughly more than a decade later from that fateful weekend— I even collaborated with one colleague on a nonacademic project. In between, I regularly met up for lunch with another colleague who finished at University of Minnesota as we were both in Southern California at one point. When I broke up with an ex, I called one of my friends who I also connected with during the interview process. This Fall, when I posted an Instagram story about my covid infection, she reached out asking if I needed anything even though we were 2,000 miles apart and had not extensively talked in years.

My colleague-friends were also invaluable this summer when I was planning my Intro to Cultural Anthropology and Methods in Anthropology courses. As you may know, I’ve been teaching writing in the School of Humanities for the past five years. While Anthropology is my specialty, I had not thought about developing any syllabi for a hot minute. Immediately, I texted my University of Minnesota friends who were located in these departments throughout the U.S. As always, they promptly responded giving me advice on what texts to use and why.

The colleagues, friends and colleague-friends you make along the way will be equally important as your superior-gatekeepers. They will be with you throughout the ups and downs. They will be your roommates at conferences. They may become your co-authors, as well as your eyes and ears while on the job market. Most importantly, they will be important companions over the course of many years.

For First-Gens, these friends can be your life line while you explain for the billionth time what you are studying, how you don’t know when you’re going to graduate, and enter the job market as the pioneer of your family. Your colleague-friends will not only help you feel validated in your struggles. They will give you invaluable advice that your family will not. Dare I say, they may even become your chosen family.

Remember to invest as much in them as faculty members! Maybe even more…