Graduate school is an important and confusing time, filled with many questions about the inner-workings of academia and decisions students must make about their futures. The Graduate Student Guidebook: From Orientation to Tenure Track offers an overview of this experience, featuring expert advice on the many different steps and challenges encountered in masters and doctoral programs.

In the current academic climate, initial decisionslike choosing an advisorcritically shape future opportunities. Students need a consistent, reliable, and up-to-date resource. In this authoritative guide, faculty from various universities, positions, and backgrounds offer sage advice, responding to concerns identified by graduate student members themselves. Moving through the text, readers learn about the transition from undergrad to graduate-level expectations, special considerations for students of marginalized groups, graduate assistantships, the importance of key decisions, comprehensive exams, writing the thesis or dissertation, publishing, conferences, navigating the job search, and making a career in a tenure track position.

Katherine A. Foss is a professor of Media Studies in the School of Journalism& Strategic Media at Middle Tennessee University. She is the head of the AEJMC Council of Divisions. Foss previously editedBeyond Princess Culture: Gender and Childrens Marketing (2019) andDemystifying the Big House: Exploring Prison Experience and Media Representations (2018). She is also the author ofConstructing the Outbreak: Epidemics in Media and Collective Memory (2020),Breastfeeding and Media: Exploring Conflicting Discourses That Threaten Public Health(2017), andTelevision and Health Responsibility in an Age of Individualism (2014).

Introduction: On Being a Grad Student, Katherine A. Foss

1 Climbing the Next Rung: Making the Transition to Graduate Student, James Stewart

2 This Is Kind of Like Your Superpower: Double-Consciousness,Micro-Activism and Other Survival Strategies of Students on the Margins, Meredith D. Clark

3 Graduate Student Decisions, Susan Keith

4 Getting the Most Out of Your Graduate Assistantship, Amanda Sturgill

5 The Mindful Thesis or Dissertation: Finding the Focus to Write, Jan Lauren Boyles

6 Making Sense of (and Making the Most of) Academic Conferences, Jennifer Greer

7 Publishing as a Graduate Student, Denise Sevick Bortree and Richard D. Waters

8 Navigating the Job Market: Basic Mechanics and Peculiarities, David D. Perlmutter

9 The Degree and the Job Are Yours. Whats Next? Successfully Transitioning from Student to Professor, Marie Hardin

Glossary of Academic Terms