Client Success Story: Gary

Not only did the work progress quicker as a result of my development improving, but I became surprised just how the levels of development occurred. Just when you thought you’d reached a limit, my coach just pushed me and pushed me, and I reached another level that I never knew existed. And this happened several times.

Before I joined Grad Coach, the problem I was discovering was that, being away from academia for a few years, I was very, very rusty. The biggest issue I had was that I did my degree at a university that didn’t have a school of architecture, so the familiarity of the subject matter was a little bit different. As a result I started to lose direction, producing enormous amounts of work and really not progressing that far over long periods of time, or as much as I wanted to.

Having these challenges made me feel really lost and disconnected from the course, and I really did give up on quite a few occasions. Not being the type of person to immediately give up, I thought I’d just give it my very best, and so I felt like I really needed somebody to help me as regularly as I needed it.

I decided to join Grad Coach because they had such an enormous resource of material that looked at different chapters, and this was extremely helpful before I even started to work with anybody. It enabled me to structure the work I’d already done on my thesis to present to a potential Grad Coach in the future. And it just looked like a really friendly, accessible company.

Having someone at my side all the time was a real comfort and a motivation to carry on. Obviously they didn’t do the work for me, but the guidance I received started to shape the direction that I took. Within a short period of time I began to really progress with the work, and that showed in my meetings with my supervisors, who could see that I’d moved on. It started to make sense, because I was writing it in a more academic language that they were familiar with and that I wasn’t particularly good at writing before. That really was the starting point for making big movements in progress. In fact, I did actually finish the degree nine months early.

Working with Grad Coach helped me in enormous ways. It helped me to think more intellectually, on a higher level, to challenge myself and be much more critical, and that was demonstrated in the quality of and the improvement in my writing. Not only did the work progress quicker as a result of my development improving, but I became surprised just how the levels of development occurred. Just when you thought you’d reached a limit, my coach just pushed me and pushed me, and I reached another level that I never knew existed. And this happened several times. I brought some of that work outside of my academic work and into my professional life.

My favorite thing about working with Grad Coach was working with my coach, Ethar, who actually became a friend — a critical friend, a comforting friend, one of support, one with a sense of humor, somebody who understood my sense of humor. The experience became joyful rather than just mechanical, and that’s because of the environment that we controlled and set up, and the connections that we made very, very early.

I wish I’d signed up with Grad Coach a little bit earlier, because that would have reduced the anxieties and the stresses and the imposter syndrome that I was experiencing.

Yes, I would definitely recommend Grad Coach, because the resources they have there for you to access are really useful. The administrative staff are very responsive as well. If you’re doing a qualitative study, then Ethar Al-Saraf is the man to go to. He gave me the belief that I could complete this work, and he made me feel that I could easily do this work by challenging my really bad habits. I went through a lot of pain and I went through a lot of joy with Ethar, and I couldn’t recommend him enough.

For anyone thinking about joining Grad Coach, I would say that it doesn’t matter what section of work you want to look at — whether it’s methodology or literature, whether it’s discussion or the body of work you’re planning to form a thesis from, whether it’s a small piece of work or a large piece of work. I couldn’t recommend the process enough. Whatever part of the work you want to discuss, whether it’s 15 minutes or an hour, you get a lot of feedback for the time spent.