Ellie Wroten

The best career advice I've ever received is that a PhD is all about perseverance - it's about maybe 10% knowledge and 90% can you get the dang thing done. In that way, nothing you do has to be your magnum opus. You should still care very deeply about the work that you do, but perfectionism will slow you down and take away from your productivity. Submit the imperfect manuscript - the editors and the reviewers are going to tell you what you need to fix before it gets published anyway. Submit the draft of the dissertation - your committee will mark it up in red and send it back to you, and that's okay. But if you spend too much time on making sure something's perfect before you release it into the world, then you are going to slow yourself down and ultimately waste time trying to be productive and perfect. Progress, not perfection. I also learned from a good friend and mentor that the PhD is like having an entire cake set in front of you - you have to eat the whole thing, but nobody said you have to do it all at the same time. Some days, you're only gonna lick a little bit of the frosting. Some days, you're gonna eat two slices. That's just how it is, and it's okay to give yourself grace for when that happens.

I would say that it's not impossible to do a PhD while you are raising babies. I literally entered graduate school 27 weeks pregnant with my oldest son on my hip. But the thing that is going to make or break you is whether you have and can seek consistent support. So, seek support from all kinds of avenues. You have people who will support you, who are in your corner, who are your ride-or-dies in your personal life, but also seek advice from mentors who are supportive of you, genuinely, in your professional career. Find the advisor who's your hype person, and your cheerleader. Find the people in your career who are going to believe in you, even when you don't believe in yourself. Those are going to be your people. I would also say that ubiquity is pretty integral to success. People want to interact with people that they can see. It's okay to be ubiquitous, as long as your ubiquity is genuine. Don't sign up to advocate for people with disabilities if you don't care, for example.

There are a lot of opportunities to connect with students and to really personalize learning. We are all coming out of a season that was very influential and very impactful for most college students - I sometimes joke that I never realized what the implications would be with students being locked in their bedrooms for two years with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are still all reeling from that. How do we foster true connection, especially in an online space? That's something I had to think about very long and hard, and that's something that I think I do rather well. We also have AI to contend with, and academic integrity and honesty to contend with, and I am actively pursuing learning opportunities with regard to that subject. There are so many opportunities for experiential learning, and the more I learn about it, the more I think about how I can incorporate this or that in my classroom. For my interns specifically, I want my students to get their hands dirty - not literally, but they're gonna see some things, they're going to be part of important conversations. There are so many opportunities for change and growth, and there's always room to pivot. One of the beauties of academia is you always can. Another particular challenge is limitations on grant funding, which does hinder academic research progress, but everyone's facing that, it's not just me.

I certainly do value family - I wouldn't be a family scientist if I wasn't. But overall, I value hard work, but I also value work-life balance. I value having support and seeking support. I value asking for help. I value being a good global citizen. Being a global citizen, you might not always be writing things for international audiences, but you can make someone's day better in your own community. You can get involved. You can support people during difficult times. You can give grace to the student who's experiencing difficult circumstances. It costs nothing to be kind. I think that kindness is so important.