CAPS: Graduate & Professional Student Q&A

Resources for Graduate & Professional Students

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A Message from our
OGS Liaison

Christina Castro, PhD
OGS Liaison

Welcome Graduate and Professional Students. We are very excited to introduce the graduate and professional tab as a new addition to our web site. As the liaison to graduate and professional students, I have been focused on gathering information to better serve your needs.

We realize how busy our graduate and professional students are and we offer a variety of resources to help you manage your multiple demands. Mort Silverman, senior adviser at the National Suicide Prevention Technical Resource Center in Newtown, Massachusetts, indicates that graduate school--with its competitive climate, relative seclusion in the lab or library, myriad of financial concerns, and constant worries about future employment--is rife with potential psycho-social triggers (US News & World Report, 2005)*. The good news is that prevention can have a huge impact on the likelihood of these stressors taking their toll. While most graduate student believe they do not have time to be preventative, they eventually find out that prevention strategies are just as important as most of their academic duties. It is important to be aware of our own tolerance levels and to attend to our most basic needs such as proper nutrition and sleep.

Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) offers individual, couples, and group counseling to all enrolled graduate and professional students who pay registration fees including the Medical School and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Our services can assist you with balancing time, managing stress and anxiety, and maintaining adequate relationships. Feel free to review all of the online resources available to you. CAPS would like to help you find the right balance between your academic and personal life so you can flourish at UCSD.

*US News and World Report, April 11, 2005 Contents under pressure, by Carolyn Kleiner Butler.

Q&A with Dr. Christina Castro

Each month, Dr. Christina Castro, our liaison to OGS, will answer a question specific to the needs of graduate students. If you would like to submit a question to her, please contact her at (858) 534-3755.

Question #1:

How do I choose an advisor?

Here are 10 tips to choosing an advisor:

Generate a list of expectations for your advisory relationship.
Review your needs and your preferred work style.
Spend time getting to know the faculty and their work styles.
Don’t be in a hurry to settle on an advisor.
Hone in on a few candidates and do some research.
If possible, find an advisor who is doing high quality research in your area of interest.
Look for an advisor who will serve as a mentor and as a source of technical assistance.
Look for good teaching and communication skills.
Identify an advisor who actively markets their students.
Remember, it is always possible to change, not ideal, but possible.

*For a full text article, see the Managing the Advisory Relationship Blog.