In graduate school, at least for the humanities and social sciences, the dreaded seminar course is the bane of students’ existence. Seminars are small, discussion-driven classes in which students are expected to play an active role, engaging with each other in critical analysis about the week’s subject. They are very demanding, both in terms of workload—weekly readings often consist of an entire book or more—and in terms of the pressure this unique environment places on students to perform well in front of their peers and professors.
Class sessions can easily devolve into a battlefield of intellectual one-upmanship in which students feel compelled to prove their academic chops. In our age of anxiety, the seminar is the ultimate breeding ground for imposter syndrome and an incubator of self-doubt. Curiously, this pressure tends to affect students in one of two ways: either one suffers from participation paralysis and is reticent to share thoughts at all, or one exhibits a propensity to excessively criticize the author or text at hand in the most lavish and convoluted ways that no one understands anyway.
Nonetheless, as an online resource from my new university puts it, “Your stellar performance in graduate seminars is paramount to your success in the graduate program.” Yikes.
Fear not, though. Succeeding in a seminar class is less about actually being the smartest in the room as it is about appearing as if you’re the smartest in the room. In other words, you must simply learn to act the part on the theatrical seminar stage. With these proven tips and tricks, hard-wrought from my own experience, you’ll be impressing your class in no time:
- When given the option, always criticize an author or text, never simply agree. Agreement appears lazy, as if you have not engaged with the text on your own. If you must agree, couch it within criticism. Along the same lines, being skeptical and deconstructing an argument is always easier than building your own positive construction.
- Talk like a fashionable academic. An easy step is to use directional words to situate and orient your analysis. Once you have this down, take it to the next level by employing geological terms to show your grasp of complex arguments. Rather than expressing how many parts there are to an author’s thesis, talk about the imbricated, or layered and overlapping, strata of the text.
- Contribute something very early on in class, preferably to an easily answerable question. This way you fill up your “speaking in class” quota and don’t have to be the one to break awkward silences later on.
- Learn a couple of key Latin or French words and phrases which you can sprinkle into your arguments during class. This is a sure-fire way to impress, and is most effective when you drop them casually as if it’s no big deal. Examples include: ergo, raison d’être, in toto, apropos, and oeuvre.
- Along the same lines, spice up your diction by indiscriminately employing philosophical words that have broad meanings and which are easily confused. My personal favorites are the terms ontological and epistemological, the former relating to being and the latter to knowledge. I once asked a professor how she keeps these terms straight, to which she bluntly replied, “I don’t.” Because your classmates will also have forgotten the meanings of these words, they will refrain from challenging your usage. The next time you need to speak in class, introduce your claim with, “Epistemologically speaking, …”
- Interdisciplinarity is all the rage, so always place your thoughts at an intersection of fields. Ninety percent of professors and graduate students do this in their “About Me” blurbs, e.g., “My research explores the intersectionality of print culture, embodied masculinity, and tea consumption in late imperial China.” When raising a point in class, be sure to position (see, another directional word!) it in terms of intersectionality.
- Figure out who the monumental academic figures are in your field and name drop them liberally. You only need a superficial understanding of their work. For Foucault, the superstar of the humanities, all you need to know is one word: power.
* This list of strategies is born out of real anxieties and pressures that grad students face. It is essentially the counterproductive advice I tell myself when feeling inadequate amidst the hyper-competitive world of academia. Though some of these methods are in fact helpful, like speaking up early in class, the majority are hogwash, and if followed will warp your very definition of success. Instead, speak clearly, saying what you mean with words you understand. Humility builds trust, and admitting you do not fully grasp a complicated theory usually leads to more fruitful discussion. Remind yourself often that you deserve to be where you are, and strive to live into the best version of academic life, the kind that values camaraderie, stimulates curiosities, and embraces failures.
Here’s to another semester!
Chad Westra (’15) is a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington where he studies modern Chinese history. He enjoys chess, following Detroit sports, and caring for the overgrowth of plants in his condo.
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As a grad student, I had a housemate doing an English Lit PhD, and I can, without exaggeration, say that she dropped the word “epistemological” into every single conversation we ever had. She was…a lot.
Oh, the seminars I have been in (and the foolishness you so neatly dispatched here).
I made a commitment early in my master’s program to always ask if I didn’t understand something or didn’t know who people were name-dropping. It is always awkward– but generally you figure out no one else really knew either, and often the person who brought it up can’t explain why they did so. Which I often find quite gratifying.
This is hilarious! Thanks for keeping it real.