You Can Do This: Resiliency in Graduate School Requires an APA Citation, Scholarly Identity, and Learning

You can do this (Linder, 2014), is a direct quote from Dr. Chris Linder, my doctoral advisor, to students in her classes, but it will not be found in any journal article.  My doctoral program, the College Student Affairs Administration (CSAA) Graduate Program at the University of Georgia, is phenomenal for challenging and supporting students' growth.  Students in the program have this humorous nature of taking statements from community members said in class and turning them into a verbal citation after they say it.  I encourage you to give it a try—for example, Grimes, 2021. Beyond creating citations, the program's culture is to orient and socialize students around their identity as scholars.  Developing the scholarly identity is partially done through the practice of referring to yourself as a Scholar (insert the last name).  To believe what you don't see starts with believing in your mind that you are what you will become.  Hearing others and calling myself Scholar Grimes made the "you can do this" mentioned earlier a bit more manageable based on being centered with a distinguished title that carries great responsibility.  What exactly does it mean to be a scholar and insert an APA in-text citation in this program?  It means finding ways to embrace a broadening perspective and giving credit to the source whose words have impacted you (Grimes, 2017).   

Scholars must engage in the process of making sacrifices, increasing resiliency, and managing a host of responsibilities.  Scholars learn to manage coursework, employment, personal life, and community priorities daily.  It may sound cliché to say that my doctoral program was comprised of scholars from various backgrounds with various experiences.  The difference each student brings to the classroom helped enriched the work done in our program and field.  I considered it a great privilege to learn from other scholars about many challenges and triumphs while sharing some of my own.  Regardless of our background, for us to finish this degree had to exercise daily resiliency.

Let me expound on my thoughts on resiliency in graduate school. Resiliency is not just about reaching the end goal, but the process you follow to reach the end.  Graduate education is consumed with taking charge of your learning.  I found myself fighting to prove my academic self-worth and ability to meet a completion goal early in my doctoral journey.  Moreover, I had to remind myself that "I can do this."  Assignments in my program helped me improve my confidence and ability to live out the title "scholar-practitioner."

Furthermore, the complexity of course content and assignments added to my scholarly competence of various information about students, policies, learning, and identity development.  Complexity is messy and necessary for success in graduate school.  Graduate education is filled with scholars who know a lot of content-specific information.  Even in their brilliance, sometimes they go to YouTube University to teach themselves what they don't know. Regardless, completing a graduate degree is a process where learning and resiliency produce the outcome of completion.  Whether you are exploring or currently embarking on a post-baccalaureate journey, remember to embrace learning and resiliency.  Why, and How? Because You Can Do This (Linder, 2017)