Building Relationships In Grad School: Add to Your Adders

Relationship management is one of the least talked about topics in graduate school, but it makes a tremendous difference because the people you interact with along your doctoral journey impact your process. They can create both challenges and opportunities; they can help you to grow in ways that you could not have ever predicted, and they can slowly [or quickly] chip away and erode the potential that you possess. In this blog, I draw from a short talk I did almost a year ago connected to an E-book I published on 5 High-Impact Things Graduate Students Can Do to Make Their Second Semester even better than the first. In this talk, I discussed the need for graduate doctoral students to center relationship management beginning with the act of critical reflection. And,urged them to ultimately add to their Adders.

One of the shortest and most practical books that I've read over the last couple of years is Dr. Verna Price's little purple book. It's called the Power of People. You can read it in the afternoon if you set aside a few hours. It was super impactful for me, and I use her book to frame the considerations I propose in this blog. Essentially, she urges us to tap into our purpose and identify how our close relationships impact us deeply. And so I'm discussing the four groups of people that she says really impact us in our lives. And she says that it's important that we identify these people and identify where they're at. Dr. Price’s model is helpful for graduate students because it can help to improve relationships in academia, professionally, and personally.