"What am I doing?" That was the first thing that went through my mind when I accepted this position. No doubt, my advisor would ask the same question of me. The second was "Oh, no. This means I’ll have to speak in public and write biweekly columns."
If you (the graduate student) are like me, you already have plenty of research, teaching, or classwork to keep you busy, and some of you even participate in clubs and sports on campus. In addition to my regular research and this job, I also manage the RPI swing band. But as I go into my fourth year in graduate school here, I find I have to carefully balance those activities that will get me out of here on time and those activities that reward me in other ways.
The band—playing as well as managing—is a great outlet for me that my normal workload wouldn’t provide. This position, on the other hand, affords me a lot of opportunity to practice public speaking and to write articles. The biggest benefit of doing all this is that it forces me to plan ahead and budget my time. In an attempt to not overdo my extracurricular activities, I try not to spend more than 10 hours a week on them. Be cognizant of how you spend your time here. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed.
I have been at RPI for almost half my life. One might think that’s a better reason not to get distracted in fleeing from it as quickly as possible, but in knowing how RPI operates at the level of an undergraduate, a graduate, a TA, and as a member of its staff, I feel some obligation to help those who are just getting here and trying to find their way around the Institute.
The Graduate Council exists for two reasons. The first is to represent the graduate student body, their complaints and concerns, to the administration. We act as a common gathering point of information. We appoint people to help on Institute committees such as high-level administrative staff searches (most recently provost, VP for student life, and dean of the school of science), internal committees like the Student Health Advisory Board and the Faculty Senate Curriculum Committee, and some student government-level committees, such as the Student Senate’s Rules and Elections Committee and the Executive Board of the Union. The people who serve on these committees represent graduate student issues and make sure our concerns are heard at all levels.
The second reason we exist is for your enjoyment. We try to have an event every month or so to get graduate students out of their labs for a little while. The barbecues, pub nights, movie nights, and dances we hold are to give you some socialization time. Feel free to talk to us during these events—we need to hear from you to know what isn’t working and where we can help. The Graduate Council also co-hosts the reception for new graduate students during orientation.
Running these events can be difficult while short-staffed, and the current council consists of six members who were voted in during GM Week and accepted their positions. The graduate senators who do double duty serving on the Student Senate and in the Graduate Council are Ayala Cnaan and Meredith Wells. The graduate class representatives are Lale
Ergene-Tukenmez, Gunaranjan Viswanathan, and myself. This leaves four Senate positions and two representative positions available. If you can’t commit to office positions, you can still be a non-voting member and help us with events. If you would like to join the Council and help us out in what we do, contact grad-council@rpi.edu by e-mail.
I’d also like to thank the outgoing Council members: Mike Brown, Andrea Barreiro, Kishore Lavu, Nikos Bentenitis, Colin Fredericks, Brian Osman, Peter Caracappa, and Kerry Dutkus, our outgoing president. To you and all the others without whose help during this past year we could not have accomplished as much as we did, I wish you much success in the future.
