“Engage more with the postgraduates…”

On my travels about Imperial and the Union I have occasionally heard that “we should engage better with the postgrads” or a statement of similar sentiment. What a wonderful idea it is, although sometimes limited to just that, with little substance to any plans to reach out to an entirely different student community. That is the root problem per se, it is an entirely different student experience, and people just don’t always get that. Imagine trying to reach out to all of the staff members at Imperial?! The approach will be tailored to that cohort, which will further consist of many differing groups and work structures. Post-graduate students are already lumped under one banner when actually a taught MSc can differ vastly from a research based PhD, and any approach to ‘better engage’ needs to reflect that. If you’re an undergraduate, you might have very little contact with anyone other than your course peers, halls friends (& enemies) and activities at the Union. The Union has a predominantly undergraduate involvement in a lot of its activities, and correspondingly many committees are run by undergrads, who have less contact with ‘postgrads’. As such it’s understandable to not fully appreciate those vast differences in lifestyle, but to able to empathise with someone you need to know the issues they face. To cater to someone’s needs, run an inclusive event or properly represent them, you have to know why it is different, appreciate it and then alter plans to accommodate. But that is a very general ideology, and a hard one at that.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a shot at the degree hat-trick (BSc, MSc, PhD) and accidentally stayed at Imperial for the duration, but my experience has shifted every time. As an undergrad I was trying to balance having fun and learning some complicated stuff. As an MSc student you work your socks off for 12 months, still getting homework over vacation while being expected to work throughout the summer in part because MSc students are meant to be difficult. Now I just sit in my office/lab trying to please/dis-please a superior/physics, while escaping to the Union beer garden as often as I dare. Term dates don’t mean a great deal to me (so it’s frustrating when everything stops around campus), and I shouldn’t really disappear in the middle of the working day (because a fuzzily defined subset of people you might call a ‘interdisciplinary team’ will have asked for me the moment I leave the building) and there is the omnipresent knowledge that any time spent away from ‘studying’ brings me closer to that funding cliff that is rapidly approaching. The next student down the corridor might work from home most days though…

So what do you have to do to better engage? There’s no magic rule, there never is, just take a little moment and think about how the other half live. If you master that though you’re probably a good candidate to lead the country.