Graduate Student Community of Practice Reflection

I am very glad to have said that I participated in the Grad Community of Practice as part of CESL. It was a really valuable experience and I feel that it contributed to my personal and also academic development. One of the most meaningful aspects of the experience was the opportunity to engage with people from similar and different fields, while also bringing in diverse perspectives to discuss. The discussions were my favorite part, and then the food that we had over the discussions. In some of the discussion, we would talk about qualitative vs quantitative research…whether those were prominent things in our field…how quantitative research has always been the "standard" of research and how it has affected researchers and other communities. That was my favorite discussion piece. And there I was able to reflect on other people's ideas, for example, we talked about how everything seems to be a numbers game. One of the follow-up questions was that, does not have numerical data reduce the weight of importance on an issue? While I very much see the benefit in having numerical data, qualitative data is just as much important too.

Over discussions like these, I reflected on my own developing identity as a graduate student, as a biology undergraduate major, and now as a counselling psychology masters student. When I listened to the perspectives of others', I heard very common challenges like having to balance academic load with stress management and trying to still have time for yourself and your loved ones. The group also provided an opportunity for collaborative learning. We would have case presentations led by a member of the group, either physically or virtually, and would learn lots of new terminology and ideologies. So, I gained insight into a lot of new topics, and was even able to bring it up in other classes that I had. Most importantly, graduate school can feel isolating sometimes, so I was glad that I had somewhere to go to every couple of months. It was really nice just to have that community and feel like I am important and belong somewhere at DU. 10/10, would recommend!