Hello! My name is Amelia, and I am one of the new graduate student writers for the Queen’s School of Graduate Studies Spotlight Series. I am part of a new cohort of writers for the Spotlight Series, alongside new bloggers for Gradifying – your connection to grad studies at Queen’s.
These two roles allow us as graduate students to develop our writing skills while contributing to the Queen’s graduate community. As Spotlight writers, we will interview students, postdocs, alumni, and faculty at Queen’s, and write stories about the wonderful work they are doing to share with the wider graduate community. Our goal is to showcase the brilliance within the grad and postdoc world at the university. We get to be interviewers, writers, and editors all at once, helping to build a repertoire of skills that will serve us both within the university and beyond.
Writer and PhD student in the School of Kinesiology & Health Studies Niya St. Amant summarizes our sentiments as we begin in our new roles by saying, “I am just excited to give attention to our graduate students and post-docs who are doing such phenomenal work and deserve to be recognized”.
Alongside the Spotlight writers are the Gradifying bloggers. For grad students by grad students, Gradifying bloggers will write pieces dedicated to giving tips and tricks to Queen’s grad students, with the goal of helping aid others throughout their studies. As Gradifying writer/administrator and fifth year PhD History candidate Victoria Seta Cosby expresses, Gradifying provides a chance to, “…help people navigate the challenges of graduate school, and in particular graduate school during the pandemic…There is so much wisdom amongst graduate students, and Gradifying is a great spot for many of us to share and benefit from this knowledge!”
Summarizing some of the many anticipated benefits of writing for Gradifying, blogger/administrator and third year PhD student in the School of Kinesiology & Health Studies Madison Danford shares that, “By joining the Gradifying team, I hope to dust off my creative cobwebs, write about things other than my research, work with and learn from folks from various departments and learn to enjoy writing again, rather than fear it”.
These newly filled positions are emblematic of the many opportunities Queen’s and the School of Graduate Studies extends its graduate students to learn skills and/or put those skills to work. To find opportunities such as these, keep your eyes peeled while reading through the School of Graduate Studies Weekly Newsletter, the Queen’s University Campus Life page, the , and in the emails forwarded by our graduate programs’ wonderful staff. You might find anything from Exam Proctoring or additional Teaching Assistant positions, to learning- based programs such as the Human Rights and Equity Office’s Learning Challenge. Or, you might wish to hear about experiences from students themselves while listening to them being interviewed on the weekly radio show Grad Chat, on CFRC 101.9FM every Tuesday at 4pm.
Campus partners like (SASS), , (QUIC), the Ban Righ Centre, Yellow House, the (SGPS), Campus Community Radio (), the (AMS), the Four Directions Indigenous Student Centre, the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, and the (in exhaustively) also have opportunities for volunteerism, work, or learning. If you’re looking for experiences in professional development specifically, consider registering for an Expanding Horizons workshop or exploring the Queen’s Innovation Centre Summer Initiative. The newly launched Queen’s Doctoral Internship in University Administration is another great way to consider and develop further career options.
All in all, if you are looking for opportunities for graduate student development outside of your classes, Queen’s and the School of Graduate Studies has you covered. Look out for them today!