​Transcript: Jevona’s experience with Grad Coach

My name is Jevona Mannix and I completed my degree in industrial-organizational psychology. I chose that degree because I noticed there was a need for this field of study in the workplace, primarily focusing on leadership and how leaders and employees were working together — or not working together. So I wanted to impact that area in the workplace to make the workplace a better place for all.

Before I joined Grad Coach, some of my challenges were writer’s block. I dealt with a lot of writer’s block, could not move forward. Sometimes I would get to sections and it felt like I was reading a foreign language on how to complete a section. More specifically, I struggled in chapter three with the methodology. So I decided to contact Grad Coach because I was not moving forward and I was stalling. And I knew that if I stayed in that stalled area of trying to figure it out myself, I would not get where I needed to be.

Having these challenges made me feel like I was in a dark place. I felt alone and isolated. I felt like I was there for the challenge, but I was not up to the challenge. And I felt like a failure at that point. And when you talk about imposter syndrome, I was feeling like a major fraud.

I decided to join Grad Coach because I’d seen a lot of the self-help videos on YouTube. And I realized that these resources were very rich, and I knew that one-on-one help would be most impactful for me. There are options for coaching and reviews. It was just a plethora of help that I actually needed and utilized. And the other reason was that I’m a remote student. So I was sitting at home and I could not go to a campus to get help, or I couldn’t just dial a friend or call my professors or my chair to get the one-on-one help that I needed that really targeted those specific areas, and get that time that I needed, whether it was 30 minutes or an hour. That’s why I joined — because I knew that I could get one-on-one targeted coaching from Grad Coach.

Working with Grad Coach, I was able to move forward while connecting and building a bond with a coach who I got to know and who got to know me. So if I was looking lost and in the dark, he knew I was lost in the dark. It also helped me have confidence when I wanted to ask a question, but was afraid of how it would be viewed. I could just ask any question, whether I felt like it was a stupid question — which there is no stupid question. I was not feeling very confident about where I was at, and I could just run things by my coach. Or I could ask my coach, what do you think about this? Or, I’m really struggling right now with my chair and this is how I view it. And sometimes they would put me on the straight path and say, now that is what you need to be doing. And then I’d say, okay, and get back to it.

My favorite thing about working with Grad Coach was the ability to just dial a friend. I could say, I need to see you tomorrow. Even though we are in two different time zones, we made it work. The ability to have my coach there — hey, I need you tomorrow morning, this is what I’m working with. The ability to have somebody say, hey, I got your back, let’s set something up. That was my favorite part. I did not feel alone at all through this whole process. It was 100% transparent, and that feeling of being down was no longer there. It was more like, hey, you got this. Let’s get back to it. This is what you need to do to make these changes. And I see it right here on the screen — just change that around, or put this in there, or you may want to go look for something else and add this. It was just golden.

I wish I would have signed up earlier because the first year would have helped me progress. It would have built more confidence early on in my approach with my entire dissertation. And it also would have helped when it came to using more of the academic language and understanding what the academic language meant.

I would recommend Grad Coach to anyone that is in a doctoral program or in a master’s program — anyone that needs help, specific help, or just help moving along in the process. Because there is a point in time where you have to realize: do I want to keep spending money and spinning my wheels, or do I want to spend money and keep moving forward? And the answer for me was, I need to spend money and move forward, because I can’t keep spinning my wheels — it’s not benefiting me, it’s not benefiting my family, and it wasn’t benefiting my progress.

You know that feeling where it’s hard to ask for help, or it’s hard to put yourself out there? And I’m not going to lie, you’re paying for it, so that’s their job. But the sincerity behind it makes it feel like your coach is not just doing their job, but doing something they would do for a family member or a close friend. And you actually build that bond and connection with an academic professional. Then you get to see their mannerisms and the way that they talk, and you want to emulate that. I found myself doing that often. Sometimes when I would be in discussions with other academics, I’d think in the back of my head, how would my coach answer that? Or how would my coach present that? So I can’t tell you how beneficial this was for me. And even with my family members, they are so familiar with my coach — because I talked about him so much, they would have thought he was our next-door neighbor.

If anyone’s thinking about joining Grad Coach, I’d say do it. Don’t hesitate. Don’t stall. Think about the benefit versus the what-if, because the what-if, we don’t know what that is. What I can say is that once you join, you will not regret it. Your confidence level will be boosted and your ability to move forward as an academic will improve, and your chairs or your other professors may see that. And there is a sense of, I can do this with Grad Coach. I got this.