Grad school can be a lonely place. While we enter with a cohort with whom we take classes in our first years of study, eventually we begin to specialize and the sense of community that might have once felt strong dissipates. But we needn’t go it alone; opportunities to collaborate are abundant, if only we seek them out.

I experienced this feeling of isolation firsthand at the start of the fall semester this year as my coursework was all but complete, barring one last course, which I opted to take as a self-directed study. That means that while most of my cohort still had one last opportunity to meet regularly in the context of a classroom—and to engage with one another as well as with the incoming cohort just beginning their coursework—I was often working alone.

Inside Higher Ed