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Information for Graduate Students

As a graduate student, you are likely facing new academic challenges. The ideas about which you are reading, thinking, and writing are becoming increasingly complex, yet you need to find clear, concise, and engaging ways to express them. You are shifting from a focus on consuming information to a focus on producing and disseminating new knowledge and insights. You are expected to be fluent in the conventions of your discipline and to produce work that is free of grammatical and spelling errors.

Academic Skills works closely with graduate students to help them develop as scholars and writers as well as teaching assistants. We hope that you will take advantage of the many services that we can offer you.

Learn more:

Services for Graduate Students

Individual Appointments

Graduate students are welcome to book a free, confidential one-on-one appointment with an Academic Skills instructor.

Fall 2021: Synchronous and asynchronous appointments are available to book in the Student Experience Portal. Synchronous appointments are delivered by Zoom as a default; if you require an in-person appointment, please call the college office to book. Note that both staff and students are required to follow all of Trent's health and safety protocols. Asynchronous appointments are an accessible option for students who wish to submit pieces of writing and receive feedback via email. More information on Academic Skills appointments. 
How do I book an appointment? 

Writing Conferences

You can book a free and confidential appointment to discuss any aspect of your writing. Academic Skills instructors can help you organize your ideas, outline, or upgrade your grammar skills. They can also look at partial drafts and comment on grammar, organization, and clarity.

Time Management for Graduate Students

Graduate work often involves long-term research and writing projects that have few check points along the way. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of what you need to accomplish and, as a result, to procrastinate your work. You can book an appointment with an Academic Skills Instructor to discuss time management problems and to create a project plan that will work for you.

Grant Applications and Personal Statements

Academic Skills provides several resources to help you as you write graduate school or grant applications. Academic Skills is not an editing or proofreading service, but our instructors can comment on the strength and clarity of your writing and organization.

We also work with the Career Centre to offer "Apply Yourself: Writing the Graduate School Personal Statement," a workshop that provides advice on what to include in personal statements as well as how to write them.

Workshops - Fall & Winter

Workshops will be presented synchronously via Zoom. An Academic Skills instructor will present the workshops.

Time Management for Grad Students

Tuesday, October 5 from 7:00 to 8:00 pm
Registration required: Trent Student Experience Portal

This workshop will help graduate students balance competing pressures and commitments for their time from a variety of sources, such as research or course work, teaching commitments, university obligations, and personal life. This is particularly important with remote learning. Through the establishment of long- and short-term goals, the process of conquering the workload will become more manageable.

Managing the Graduate Reading Load

Tuesday, November 2 from 7:00 to 8:00 pm
Registration required: Trent Student Experience Portal

This workshop will help graduate students understand the goals of graduate reading, the key challenges of reading large volumes of text, the process of reading, and methods to deal with the graduate reading load effectively and efficiently. We will discuss note-taking strategies and some of the common pitfalls of graduate reading.

Strong Writing for Grad Students

Tuesday, November 30 from 7:00 to 8:00 pm
Registration required: Trent Student Experience Portal

This workshop will explore principles of strong writing to achieve progress on many written assignments from course-based writing to research proposals and thesis writing. We will explore the writing process as an aid in clarifying the thought process. We will discuss style and flow in writing, the needs of the reader, and the basis of strong writing, the paragraph.

Winter Workshop Titles (Tentative)

  • Grammar for Grad Students
    • Have you ever received feedback and you are not even sure what it means? What is a comma splice anyway? Then this workshop is for you! We will delve into the mysteries of English grammar to help you edit and improve your writing. We will consider topics such as: sentence structure, punctuation, subject-verb agreement, modifiers, active and passive voice, and parallel structure.
  • Presenting and Writing about Data (Quantitative) for Grad Students
    • Are you planning on including quantitative data in your research project? Then this workshop was created for you! We will discuss general thesis organization principles that will save you time and energy, how to write about statistics, the best methods to visually present your data, and how to refer to figures in your writing. We will conclude with a discussion of how to explain your findings in both the results and discussion sections of your thesis or dissertation.
  • Presenting your Research for Grad Students
    • You have been working on your research for what seems like ages and now you are ready to present your findings to others. We will discuss the main principles for presenting conference papers from all disciplines, how to present your research in the form of a poster presentation for a conference, and how to discuss your project in a short ‘elevator talk’ or Three-Minute Thesis format. We will focus on how to communicate difficult subjects to wider audiences by paying attention to audience, clarity and concision, and overall communication skills. As well, we will focus on presentation skills in an online environment.

Graduate Students Writers’ Group: Motivation Mondays (Fall 2021)

Calling all Graduate Students…..Let’s get writing this fall!

Motivation Mondays supports writing and productivity, encourages effective goal setting, and helps to develop writing skills for Trent graduate students. The Graduate Students Writers’ Group will present tips to improve student writing, as well as to create a community of writers to encourage and celebrate achievements of writing. Students at any stage of writing, including writing for course work, master’s thesis, or doctoral dissertation, are welcome to attend.

The writers’ group will meet, virtually, every week during the fall to offer a point of connection for graduate students during the writing stages of their studies. The group will address common academic and emotional challenges often encountered by Graduate students during the writing phase of their studies and offer strategies for coping with these challenges.

In addition to weekly meetings, all participants will have access to the Graduate Writers’ Blackboard site with resources focused on the writing process, goal setting, and taking care of the writer. Graduate students may choose to participate via Blackboard, to attend the weekly meetings, or both!  

The meetings will be held virtually via Zoom every Monday morning from 10:30 to 11:30 am. The first meeting is on Monday, September 27 from 10:30 to 11:30 am.

You may register at any time throughout the semester. You only need to register once and then you will receive reminder emails with Zoom links for each meeting. Register through the Trent Student Experience Portal. Trent Academic Skills and Traill College facilitate the Graduate Students Writers’ Group. For further information, please contact Academic Skills Instructor: Dr. Sue Beckwith

Schedule of meeting dates and tentative topics on writing and motivation:

  • September 27
    • Pre-writing strategies: Organizing your ideas
    • Goal setting
  • October 4
    • Using your outline to manage time
    • How to build momentum: 5 steps
  • October 11
    • Thanksgiving weekend: No session
  • October 18
    • Focusing on literature reviews
    • The motivation equation
  • October 25
    • Reducing wordiness
    • Blocking your time to write
  • November 1
    • Integrating evidence
    • Imposter syndrome
  • November 8
    • Typical moves in a research paper
    • Overcoming academic perfectionism
  • November 15
    • Paragraph structures
    • Stress and burnout in Graduate students
  • November 22
    • Creating cohesion
    • 5 ways to stop negative self-talk
  • November 29
    • Using passive and active voice
    • Impulsivity and distraction
  • December 6
    • Revision strategies: Early and late stage revision
    • Celebrate your progress

Services for Teaching Assistants

Referring Students

As a teaching assistant, you can refer students to Academic Skills for help with their math, reading, listening, writing, and grammar skills. Referrals can be made either by emailing acdskills@trentu.ca (please cc the student on the email) or by providing students with information about our services. Students can book appointments directly at www.trentu.ca/sep

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Trent University respectfully acknowledges it is located on the treaty and traditional territory of the Mississauga Anishinaabeg. We offer our gratitude to First Peoples for their care for, and teachings about, our earth and our relations. May we honour those teachings.

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