StrangeLight

oh yeah, seminar etiquette. this may vary by discipline, so i'm speaking primarily of history (and this can extend maybe to most of the humanities/social sciences).

1) don't talk about your personal stories, as someone else mentioned. we're trying to discuss a book, not hear your life story.

2) don't talk about your research in seminar, unless you are specifically asked about your research or unless the reading is precisely on your topic. there are few things more irritating to your colleagues than hearing, "this really reminds me of my own work on _________," especially when your own work actually has zero connection to the reading. talking about your research doesn't further the conversation for anyone else. after seminar, when you're hanging with your cohort, then talk about your work and how the books relate and all that. but in the 2-3 hours you have to really discuss this stuff in seminar, use it wisely.

3) find something good to say about the stuff you're reading. grad students' favourite hobby seems to be ripping apart the scholarship they themselves cannot (yet) produce. it's important to see a work's limitations or missteps, but try to engage with the reading by asking, "what is this author trying to do? what was their aim? did they achieve it? am i convinced?" rather than, "he really should have talked about X and Y instead of A and B." you can't criticize a book for not answering the questions it doesn't even ask, but that doesn't stop many grad students from trying.

1) definitely budget well for first few months. moving, getting an apartment, buying textbooks, and waiting until the end of the month for your first paycheck sucks. hard.

2) you will have less time than you think. even though you've been warned that it's a lot of work, it's still more work than you think it is. get used to 60+ hours of work a week.

3) you'll have to schedule your fun time. i hate planning my fun, but without doing that, it turns out i never have time for fun. at a certain point, you need to accept that you're not going to finish X tonight and just go grab a beer.

4) get 8 hours of sleep. every night. just do it. you can't do everything, and if you try to, you'll get sluggish and won't do anything well. sleep.

1) definitely budget well for first few months. moving, getting an apartment, buying textbooks, and waiting until the end of the month for your first paycheck sucks. hard.

2) you will have less time than you think. even though you've been warned that it's a lot of work, it's still more work than you think it is. get used to 60+ hours of work a week.

3) you'll have to schedule your fun time. i hate planning my fun, but without doing that, it turns out i never have time for fun. at a certain point, you need to accept that you're not going to finish X tonight and just go grab a beer.

4) get 8 hours of sleep. every night. just do it. you can't do everything, and if you try to, you'll get sluggish and won't do anything well. sleep.

oh yeah, seminar etiquette. this may vary by discipline, so i'm speaking primarily of history (and this can extend maybe to most of the humanities/social sciences).

1) don't talk about your personal stories, as someone else mentioned. we're trying to discuss a book, not hear your life story.

2) don't talk about your research in seminar, unless you are specifically asked about your research or unless the reading is precisely on your topic. there are few things more irritating to your colleagues than hearing, "this really reminds me of my own work on _________," especially when your own work actually has zero connection to the reading. talking about your research doesn't further the conversation for anyone else. after seminar, when you're hanging with your cohort, then talk about your work and how the books relate and all that. but in the 2-3 hours you have to really discuss this stuff in seminar, use it wisely.

3) find something good to say about the stuff you're reading. grad students' favourite hobby seems to be ripping apart the scholarship they themselves cannot (yet) produce. it's important to see a work's limitations or missteps, but try to engage with the reading by asking, "what is this author trying to do? what was their aim? did they achieve it? am i convinced?" rather than, "he really should have talked about X and Y instead of A and B." you can't criticize a book for not answering the questions it doesn't even ask, but that doesn't stop many grad students from trying.

1) definitely budget well for first few months. moving, getting an apartment, buying textbooks, and waiting until the end of the month for your first paycheck sucks. hard.

2) you will have less time than you think. even though you've been warned that it's a lot of work, it's still more work than you think it is. get used to 60+ hours of work a week.

3) you'll have to schedule your fun time. i hate planning my fun, but without doing that, it turns out i never have time for fun. at a certain point, you need to accept that you're not going to finish X tonight and just go grab a beer.

4) get 8 hours of sleep. every night. just do it. you can't do everything, and if you try to, you'll get sluggish and won't do anything well. sleep.

filing cabinets are good. any sort of filing system.

corkboard and coloured notecards. especially helpful for visually mapping out a long-term research project.

a calendar of some sort. do you write in an agenda? use your computer's calendar? want something on the wall? time management will be key in your life and you'll need this. badly.

external hard-drives and thumb drives. back up everything. save it on your computer and your thumb drive at all times. back it all up on the external HD once every two weeks or whenever you remember. keep updated copies of your work in two or three places. i had a friend who left everything on a thumb drive, and HE LOST IT (he luckily had a month-old version of his work saved in his email). i had another friend who used his laptop and his external HD only, and spilled coffee on both while he was doing a back-up. he promptly quit graduate school and he was ABD. (he claims the decision to quit came two days before the terrible spill, but i don't believe him).

a laptop. if you've already got a desktop, then get one of those little netbooks. they're light and they have long battery life.

several different comfy chairs. you will spend most of your time sitting down. get a variety of "feels" with your chairs. hard and upright, soft and sunken in, good for stretching your legs out straight, something that reclines, an ergonomically correct stool. trust me.

oh yeah, seminar etiquette. this may vary by discipline, so i'm speaking primarily of history (and this can extend maybe to most of the humanities/social sciences).

1) don't talk about your personal stories, as someone else mentioned. we're trying to discuss a book, not hear your life story.

2) don't talk about your research in seminar, unless you are specifically asked about your research or unless the reading is precisely on your topic. there are few things more irritating to your colleagues than hearing, "this really reminds me of my own work on _________," especially when your own work actually has zero connection to the reading. talking about your research doesn't further the conversation for anyone else. after seminar, when you're hanging with your cohort, then talk about your work and how the books relate and all that. but in the 2-3 hours you have to really discuss this stuff in seminar, use it wisely.

3) find something good to say about the stuff you're reading. grad students' favourite hobby seems to be ripping apart the scholarship they themselves cannot (yet) produce. it's important to see a work's limitations or missteps, but try to engage with the reading by asking, "what is this author trying to do? what was their aim? did they achieve it? am i convinced?" rather than, "he really should have talked about X and Y instead of A and B." you can't criticize a book for not answering the questions it doesn't even ask, but that doesn't stop many grad students from trying.

oh yeah, seminar etiquette. this may vary by discipline, so i'm speaking primarily of history (and this can extend maybe to most of the humanities/social sciences).

1) don't talk about your personal stories, as someone else mentioned. we're trying to discuss a book, not hear your life story.

2) don't talk about your research in seminar, unless you are specifically asked about your research or unless the reading is precisely on your topic. there are few things more irritating to your colleagues than hearing, "this really reminds me of my own work on _________," especially when your own work actually has zero connection to the reading. talking about your research doesn't further the conversation for anyone else. after seminar, when you're hanging with your cohort, then talk about your work and how the books relate and all that. but in the 2-3 hours you have to really discuss this stuff in seminar, use it wisely.

3) find something good to say about the stuff you're reading. grad students' favourite hobby seems to be ripping apart the scholarship they themselves cannot (yet) produce. it's important to see a work's limitations or missteps, but try to engage with the reading by asking, "what is this author trying to do? what was their aim? did they achieve it? am i convinced?" rather than, "he really should have talked about X and Y instead of A and B." you can't criticize a book for not answering the questions it doesn't even ask, but that doesn't stop many grad students from trying.

1) definitely budget well for first few months. moving, getting an apartment, buying textbooks, and waiting until the end of the month for your first paycheck sucks. hard.

2) you will have less time than you think. even though you've been warned that it's a lot of work, it's still more work than you think it is. get used to 60+ hours of work a week.

3) you'll have to schedule your fun time. i hate planning my fun, but without doing that, it turns out i never have time for fun. at a certain point, you need to accept that you're not going to finish X tonight and just go grab a beer.

4) get 8 hours of sleep. every night. just do it. you can't do everything, and if you try to, you'll get sluggish and won't do anything well. sleep.

filing cabinets are good. any sort of filing system.

corkboard and coloured notecards. especially helpful for visually mapping out a long-term research project.

a calendar of some sort. do you write in an agenda? use your computer's calendar? want something on the wall? time management will be key in your life and you'll need this. badly.

external hard-drives and thumb drives. back up everything. save it on your computer and your thumb drive at all times. back it all up on the external HD once every two weeks or whenever you remember. keep updated copies of your work in two or three places. i had a friend who left everything on a thumb drive, and HE LOST IT (he luckily had a month-old version of his work saved in his email). i had another friend who used his laptop and his external HD only, and spilled coffee on both while he was doing a back-up. he promptly quit graduate school and he was ABD. (he claims the decision to quit came two days before the terrible spill, but i don't believe him).

a laptop. if you've already got a desktop, then get one of those little netbooks. they're light and they have long battery life.

several different comfy chairs. you will spend most of your time sitting down. get a variety of "feels" with your chairs. hard and upright, soft and sunken in, good for stretching your legs out straight, something that reclines, an ergonomically correct stool. trust me.

i started off telling them that i was planning to apply to their school's program in the fall. told them where i got my BA and the primary faculty member i worked with on my undergrad thesis. wrote 2 sentences max about my general research interests. one sentence about place and time period and general themes, and maybe one sentence about a dissertation topic. then asked if they were taking on new graduate students in the fall or if they were planning on going on leave any time. ended the email saying if they wished to discuss my research ideas in further detail to email or phone me. the whole exchange wasn't more than 5 sentences.

i only had two instances where professors did not reply to my initial email. many wanted to talk to me by phone, and a few forwarded my email to their colleagues in their department who then contacted me themselves.


keep the intro brief and let them decide if they want to follow up with you. give them a short idea of your research interests beyond "modern german history" but don't bombard them with a dissertation proposal. that discussion can wait for follow-up emails or phone conversations.

good luck!


edit: also, don't ask them any questions that you could find the answer to on the department's website. bad form. i wrote to one professor and asked some specific questions about his work, whether or not he was taking on grad students, etc. he told me he was going on leave for a year and a half, which is code for "if you say you want to work with me you won't get in this year," and then he copied and pasted information from the department website about their program, which i hadn't even asked him for. it felt like an auto-response.

1) definitely budget well for first few months. moving, getting an apartment, buying textbooks, and waiting until the end of the month for your first paycheck sucks. hard.

2) you will have less time than you think. even though you've been warned that it's a lot of work, it's still more work than you think it is. get used to 60+ hours of work a week.

3) you'll have to schedule your fun time. i hate planning my fun, but without doing that, it turns out i never have time for fun. at a certain point, you need to accept that you're not going to finish X tonight and just go grab a beer.

4) get 8 hours of sleep. every night. just do it. you can't do everything, and if you try to, you'll get sluggish and won't do anything well. sleep.

1. "cherry-picking" does not mean what you think it does.

2. in graduate programs, you want your professors to know you. when they write you letters for grants or the job market, they need to be able to speak to your ability as a student, future professor, and researcher. graduate school is like an apprenticeship for becoming a professor. not only would it be nearly impossible to make that an anonymous situation, it's also highly undesirable. guess what? these professors form their opinions about you based on your work. they don't give a rat's ass about what you look like. whatever opinion they form about you, they do it through your writing, your participation in seminars, your lab work, as their TA.

3. if you feel as though a professor is judging your work negatively for something other than your academic merit, take the paper to the prof in his or her office hours and ask how you can improve in the future. just being proactive about seeking extra help, instead of assuming your grades are based on personal problems rather than the quality of your work, will go a long way to changing that professor's personal opinion about you. then, if you're right about them grading on who they like instead of academic merit, your grades will improve. my guess, however, is that if you're a really good student, any prof will see that. conversely, if you're an average student, they may grade a little more kindly to the students they like over those that they don't. easiest way to avoid this is to elevate your own work from average to good or great. then there won't be any question.

filing cabinets are good. any sort of filing system.

corkboard and coloured notecards. especially helpful for visually mapping out a long-term research project.

a calendar of some sort. do you write in an agenda? use your computer's calendar? want something on the wall? time management will be key in your life and you'll need this. badly.

external hard-drives and thumb drives. back up everything. save it on your computer and your thumb drive at all times. back it all up on the external HD once every two weeks or whenever you remember. keep updated copies of your work in two or three places. i had a friend who left everything on a thumb drive, and HE LOST IT (he luckily had a month-old version of his work saved in his email). i had another friend who used his laptop and his external HD only, and spilled coffee on both while he was doing a back-up. he promptly quit graduate school and he was ABD. (he claims the decision to quit came two days before the terrible spill, but i don't believe him).

a laptop. if you've already got a desktop, then get one of those little netbooks. they're light and they have long battery life.

several different comfy chairs. you will spend most of your time sitting down. get a variety of "feels" with your chairs. hard and upright, soft and sunken in, good for stretching your legs out straight, something that reclines, an ergonomically correct stool. trust me.

filing cabinets are good. any sort of filing system.

corkboard and coloured notecards. especially helpful for visually mapping out a long-term research project.

a calendar of some sort. do you write in an agenda? use your computer's calendar? want something on the wall? time management will be key in your life and you'll need this. badly.

external hard-drives and thumb drives. back up everything. save it on your computer and your thumb drive at all times. back it all up on the external HD once every two weeks or whenever you remember. keep updated copies of your work in two or three places. i had a friend who left everything on a thumb drive, and HE LOST IT (he luckily had a month-old version of his work saved in his email). i had another friend who used his laptop and his external HD only, and spilled coffee on both while he was doing a back-up. he promptly quit graduate school and he was ABD. (he claims the decision to quit came two days before the terrible spill, but i don't believe him).

a laptop. if you've already got a desktop, then get one of those little netbooks. they're light and they have long battery life.

several different comfy chairs. you will spend most of your time sitting down. get a variety of "feels" with your chairs. hard and upright, soft and sunken in, good for stretching your legs out straight, something that reclines, an ergonomically correct stool. trust me.

filing cabinets are good. any sort of filing system.

corkboard and coloured notecards. especially helpful for visually mapping out a long-term research project.

a calendar of some sort. do you write in an agenda? use your computer's calendar? want something on the wall? time management will be key in your life and you'll need this. badly.

external hard-drives and thumb drives. back up everything. save it on your computer and your thumb drive at all times. back it all up on the external HD once every two weeks or whenever you remember. keep updated copies of your work in two or three places. i had a friend who left everything on a thumb drive, and HE LOST IT (he luckily had a month-old version of his work saved in his email). i had another friend who used his laptop and his external HD only, and spilled coffee on both while he was doing a back-up. he promptly quit graduate school and he was ABD. (he claims the decision to quit came two days before the terrible spill, but i don't believe him).

a laptop. if you've already got a desktop, then get one of those little netbooks. they're light and they have long battery life.

several different comfy chairs. you will spend most of your time sitting down. get a variety of "feels" with your chairs. hard and upright, soft and sunken in, good for stretching your legs out straight, something that reclines, an ergonomically correct stool. trust me.

1) the ranking systems are pretty much meaningless. when you talk to any professor about school X's program, they know it only by the current faculty there and those individuals' reputations, not as being "top 10" or "top 20" or "outside the top 50." the only people that pay attention to the rankings are grad students and people trying to get the alumni to donate.

2) everyone mentions 3 or 4 professors at each program in their SOPs. everyone tailors their SOP to fit specifically with whatever school they're applying to. everyone writes sincere applications. so, to that extent, nothing you did in your applications to these top 50/60 schools is unique. all the applications they received, or almost all of them, were carefully considered, thoughtfully written, and tailored to the department and the faculty within it.

3) you were rejected by those schools because they didn't have space for you, your potential advisors weren't taking on new graduate students, a different professor won the battle over whose potential advisee got "the last spot," they couldn't find funding for you, or they just didn't think your work was that interesting. you may have seen more of a "fit" in your application than they did. you might have bored them. just because "school #17" validated your potential as an academic doesn't mean schools 18-100 have to do the same.

don't over-analyze it. just be happy that you have a few acceptances to choose from.

it seems way too soon to begin that conversation. what do you mean by negotiate? if they are only offering partial funding and you need full funding to attend, wait until you have another fully funded offer from a comparable institution and then contact the director of grad studies in the history department at the partially-funded school. they may be able to scrape full funding for you together.

but i should warn you: if a school is offering you 5 years of TAship or fellowship or a combination of TAship and fellowship years, then that is likely the best they can do for you. it will be difficult to get an increase in the number of fellowship years, although this may be possible when other students with better funding offers reject the school's offer, but that won't start happening until march. if you're looking for an increase in the dollar amount they're promising, don't bother. the department doesn't control that, the planning and budget committee of the entire university sets the pay rates for TAships and internal fellowships, and there's nothing you can do about that. trying to negotiate for a few extra thousand dollars a year will not only not work, it risks seriously offending the professors and the dean's office.

it is not unheard of for fully funded offers of admission to be rescinded when a student tries to play hardball with funding negotiations. in fact, if you were given 5 years of funding (without an MA already in hand) or 4 years (with an MA in hand), then i STRONGLY urge you not to negotiate funding at all.

commercial drive area (on commercial drive, anywhere between 1st ave and 12th ave). mount pleasant neighbourhood (near east broadway, between main street and clark). point grey (the neighbourhood west of kitsilano, closest to ubc without technically being on the endowment lands) also has a lot of grad students and young families. kitsilano is yuppie central, many young professionals with young families and the occasional student living here or there. you'll also find a lot of people who are grad student-age, but not usually grad students, in the west end (downtown, west of burrard).

the west end's a great neighbourhood. the neighbourhood is surrounded by 3 great streets (davie, denman, and robson) that feature some of the best restaurants, coffee houses, and boutiques in the city. they're all in walking distance. you're also walking distance to the downtown core. downtown is to the east, and stanley park (a rather large park full of lovely big trees) is on the west. to the north is coal harbor, and a nice beach with a view of north and west vancouver. south is english bay, another nice beach, and a view back onto vancouver quadra. you can see kitsilano and ubc from there. really lovely. mountains, beaches, forest. hard to beat.

the rents used to be higher here than in other neighbourhoods, but in recent years the rest of the city caught up to pricing in the west end. i've got a 1 bedroom, pets allowed, d/w, w/d, for $900 month. i steal wifi from neighbours and for some reason a free cable signal comes into the apartment, so i have no utilities whatsoever. there are studio apartments in my building that go for as little as $550/month, though they're considerably smaller than my unit. if you look hard, you can find deals all around this neighbourhood. just takes some patience.

a bit of a walk to the major bus lines, though. that's probably the only downside. it can take 40 minutes to get to ubc from here, but it takes that long, longer, to get to ubc from the commercial drive area too.

There are probably people in my program who have 4.0s, but I'm sure there are way more with lower GPAs than mine (3.917... I calculated wrong in some other thread). I spent so much of this semester focusing on my classwork that I barely made a dent in my research. Not worth it, in my opinion. I know from professors at a few schools, and grad students who are on the hiring committee at my school, that grades don't matter that much when hiring a professor. 3.0s look a little suspect, but those applications are reviewed like the 4.0 ones and the real difference on who gets invited to interview and who gets the job really comes down to the quality of your research, who is writing your LORs, and how you gel with the departments in terms of personality and filling their research niche.

Essentially, how good your masters thesis is (and whether it gets published, and where it gets published) and how good your dissertation is (and if you could potentially turn it into a book, at least in my field) matter FAR more for hiring prospects than the difference between a 3.5 or a 4.0. Don't lose your funding, as others have mentioned, but don't sacrifice your research to turn an A- into an A.

filing cabinets are good. any sort of filing system.

corkboard and coloured notecards. especially helpful for visually mapping out a long-term research project.

a calendar of some sort. do you write in an agenda? use your computer's calendar? want something on the wall? time management will be key in your life and you'll need this. badly.

external hard-drives and thumb drives. back up everything. save it on your computer and your thumb drive at all times. back it all up on the external HD once every two weeks or whenever you remember. keep updated copies of your work in two or three places. i had a friend who left everything on a thumb drive, and HE LOST IT (he luckily had a month-old version of his work saved in his email). i had another friend who used his laptop and his external HD only, and spilled coffee on both while he was doing a back-up. he promptly quit graduate school and he was ABD. (he claims the decision to quit came two days before the terrible spill, but i don't believe him).

a laptop. if you've already got a desktop, then get one of those little netbooks. they're light and they have long battery life.

several different comfy chairs. you will spend most of your time sitting down. get a variety of "feels" with your chairs. hard and upright, soft and sunken in, good for stretching your legs out straight, something that reclines, an ergonomically correct stool. trust me.

i'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but i think my experience might be helpful.

i just passed my comprehensive exams with the highest level of distinction my department offers, and one that they haven't given to anyone in my subfield over the last 10 years at least. my examiners are known to be especially difficult and demanding, the type that will ask you precisely what you meant in footnote 27 on page 11. but i made it through, and i made it through with flying colours. here's what i learned:

it is totally okay to respond to a question with "i don't remember." i was asked about a single author's specific argument on a certain issue. i remembered the author, the book, and other arguments, so i started bringing those up, but i knew i wasn't answering the question i had been asked. so i paused, thought, and then said, "i know i'm not answering this question properly." and you know what happened? my examiner said, "i can ask you something else." i said YES! she did. it was fine. at another moment, i was explaining the difference between X in one country versus another, and an examiner asked me, "do you remember why X was different there?" i didn't, so i said no, but i said i'd write it down and we could come back to it if i remember.

the moral being: you're allowed to not remember stuff. they don't expect you to be perfect. it's not about total recall of information. what the comps really wants is for you to be able to talk about the overall trajectory of your field, to speak to the way the subjects and debates have changed, and to look forward to new questions that remain to be answered. if you think about the big picture of your fields and just place everything you've read within that trajectory, you'll do great on comps. that's what they want to hear. and you don't need to remember every minute detail of every single book or article to demonstrate command over an entire intellectual field. your examiners know that, and unless you're at the type of program that specifically looks to fail people on comps/quals in order to thin their herd, you'll be fine without being perfect.

now, up until that oral defense, i was exhausted. i was tired and anxious and bursting into tears for no apparent reason under the simultaneous pressures of comps, coursework, and writing my dissertation proposal. so it wasn't easy or anything. but in the moment of the defense, if you can breathe deeply and just rely on what you know and be honest about what you can't recall, you'll survive it. because once you sit in that chair, you either know it or you don't, and panicking will only make it harder to think, so if you don't know it, let it go. they won't fail you for that.

1) definitely budget well for first few months. moving, getting an apartment, buying textbooks, and waiting until the end of the month for your first paycheck sucks. hard.

2) you will have less time than you think. even though you've been warned that it's a lot of work, it's still more work than you think it is. get used to 60+ hours of work a week.

3) you'll have to schedule your fun time. i hate planning my fun, but without doing that, it turns out i never have time for fun. at a certain point, you need to accept that you're not going to finish X tonight and just go grab a beer.

4) get 8 hours of sleep. every night. just do it. you can't do everything, and if you try to, you'll get sluggish and won't do anything well. sleep.

there is some concern with coming from a top program. the article people keep citing notes that top 20 programs hire people from other top 20 programs. and? so? if your goal is to be TT at a top 20 program, then you definitely need to go to one. but if your goal is to be TT somewhere, maybe near a city you'd even want to live in, then you don't need to come from harvard/princeton/yale. and as natsteel rightly pointed out, the name alone does not carry you. if your work isn't top notch, then you can take your yale degree to a community college, if you're lucky.

at the same time, many top 20 programs are rather conservative with the methodology/historiography/argumentation that they teach. this is especially true of (some of) the ivies. conservative is fine, people still make important contributions to scholarship, and sometimes jumping on every theoretical trend can backfire if those new approaches go out of favour too quickly. but if you want to be doing cutting-edge research, odds are you'll be looking at programs that aren't in the top 10 or top 20. and other schools know this. programs that want to hire someone who is cutting edge will often pass over top 20 candidates in favour of someone from a well-known but not "well-ranked" school.

many of my colleagues have "always" wanted to be professors. i know a lot of people who have left programs over the years, and a lot of them end up teaching high school. one of my profs, who received her degree from michigan, knows a couple of her grad school colleagues who teach at a boarding school for really motivated high school students. they say it's more fulfilling than teaching for really unmotivated grad students. i can see the appeal in that. so if your fall back plan is to teach high school, then there's no reason not to pursue a PhD. it can come in handy, especially at elite or experimental high schools.

teaching has never really been my goal. all i've wanted to do is research and write. whether that ends up in books or journals versus newspapers versus NGO reports doesn't matter that much to me, as long as i get to write about things that are important to me as a global citizen. i've maintained some of my activist ties, i'm developing some others, i've made connections and done work with museums, and i've stayed in touch with my journalism contacts. if the academia job market is still horrendous in 4 years, i plan to have enough ties to other fields that i can take my researching skills elsewhere.

the reality is a lot of PhDs won't get academic jobs. but if you're okay with that (i am) and you plan for it during grad school, you'll find work using the skills you've developed over 6-7 years. sadly, almost no PhD programs actually help prepare their students for this, but that doesn't mean you can't be thinking seriously about plan B while working diligently with great dedication towards plan A.

also... borderlands is absolutely right. network early in your graduate career. go to conferences. even if you have nothing to present, just go. odds are there will only be 6 people watching your panel anyway. sit in on other panels, introduce yourself to other scholars, chat about work. they'll start seeing you over and over (we travel all over the world to present our work to the same X number of people). you'll get asked to write book chapters, to contribute to special editions of journals, to present on panels. all good stuff. if you don't start this until your third or fourth year in a program, you'll be 3-4 years behind the other people that started this on day one. apply for every award and fellowship that is even remotely relevant for what you do. it takes a long time, but it pays off. you get money, you add lines to your CV, but mostly you communicate to people that you know how to put that money to good use, to make good research, and to convince many, many scholars that your research is worth paying for. i've seen people with perfect GPAs and LORs get turned down year after year for fellowships because the committee didn't think their project was worth the investment. the more people you can get to give you financial or institutional support for your work, the more you convince hiring committees that your work actually matters to your field.

oh yeah, seminar etiquette. this may vary by discipline, so i'm speaking primarily of history (and this can extend maybe to most of the humanities/social sciences).

1) don't talk about your personal stories, as someone else mentioned. we're trying to discuss a book, not hear your life story.

2) don't talk about your research in seminar, unless you are specifically asked about your research or unless the reading is precisely on your topic. there are few things more irritating to your colleagues than hearing, "this really reminds me of my own work on _________," especially when your own work actually has zero connection to the reading. talking about your research doesn't further the conversation for anyone else. after seminar, when you're hanging with your cohort, then talk about your work and how the books relate and all that. but in the 2-3 hours you have to really discuss this stuff in seminar, use it wisely.

3) find something good to say about the stuff you're reading. grad students' favourite hobby seems to be ripping apart the scholarship they themselves cannot (yet) produce. it's important to see a work's limitations or missteps, but try to engage with the reading by asking, "what is this author trying to do? what was their aim? did they achieve it? am i convinced?" rather than, "he really should have talked about X and Y instead of A and B." you can't criticize a book for not answering the questions it doesn't even ask, but that doesn't stop many grad students from trying.