​Transcript: Destiny’s experience with Grad Coach

My name is Destiny and I completed a degree in psychology with a minor in sociology.

Before I joined Grad Coach, most of my challenges were with wanting to take initiative and take charge of my academic experience. And many professors, as most undergrads know, don’t take undergrad research seriously. My supervisors were fantastic, but they were very busy.

I decided to join Grad Coach for a variety of reasons. The first was when I was looking up resources and looking up reviews, I really appreciated the way Grad Coach just laid it out for you. Other services have these massive hoops that you have to jump through just to get access to information. So just having that transparency up front. And then at that first welcome call, just having someone ask you exactly what you wanted — what are your goals, what do you hope to get out of it? It was quick. It was efficient. And you could tell they really cared. So it was pretty much mindless at that point to join Grad Coach. It was just quite simple.

Working with Grad Coach helped me to streamline absolutely everything, from the research question to the research proposal, all the way down to the literature review. How are we going to approach the literature review? What framework are we following? Are we laying everything out to be consistent? I’ve noticed when talking to other individuals, their literature reviews were a mess. They’re switching up their criteria, they’re following inconsistent models. And with Grad Coach, they just really lay everything out for you. And it’s documented. So when you’re in the midst of everything, you can refer back to your notes, refer back to your coach meetings, and stay consistent in your work.

My favorite thing working with Grad Coach was not just the information, but I just think I had a fabulous coach who made me feel really on top of everything. Having that support made me walk into the lab with a new confidence, made me present my materials in a way that I knew was polished. I knew it was good work. And that had to have been my favorite thing, because that opened up so many opportunities for me.

I think that as soon as you can — as soon as you have just an inkling of a direction — it’s important to just get started with Grad Coach and have those conversations, those difficult conversations.

I would recommend Grad Coach to anyone in their literature review stages, because that is one of the foundational pieces in your project. And if you don’t do that correctly, you’re going to lose so much time. So this applies to first generation students, students of minority backgrounds, international students, students where English is not their first language. I think that having that is so crucial because, one, you come prepared, you come polished, you aren’t going to lose time because of inability to have access to adequate resources. And you’re going to be performing at or better than your academic cohort. In my experience as an ethnic minority, first generation college student, when I logged on to Grad Coach, I saw diverse faces. And having professionals in your field helped buffer that this isn’t a mistake — you’re not here on accident.

For anyone thinking about joining Grad Coach, I’d say put your ego aside. Many people think that in academia, it’s all your own ideas, your own thoughts in a vacuum. And it’s not. Your work is building off the backs of other researchers and other people and other existing literature. And you’re very new to this terrain. So it would be foolish to assume that these great researchers, the people you look up to, didn’t have help or didn’t have assistance. If you want to be competitive, then investing in yourself by applying to something like Grad Coach, which I highly recommend, is the right move for you. There’s no questions asked. It’ll pay back in dividends. It will save you time. It will make you feel more confident. So if you’re thinking about it, just do it.