Service Work in Graduate School: Taking on too Much
By Kayla Gibson
Kayla Gibson
When applying to graduate schools, what I wanted most out of a future department was community and collaboration. After applying, when it came to choosing a program, it was necessary for me to visit these departments to get a first-hand feel of their community. I was able to visit one in person and one online where I got to meet with Rutgers students. From these two schools, I chose Rutgers because it seemed to have a stronger sense of community. However, I missed out on a lot of in person activities because my first year of graduate school was during the height of a global pandemic. It was hard to meet people and make connections over Zoom so my cohort was not super close. I also didn’t get a chance to meet many older students or professors, so I didn’t get to experience this sense of collaboration and community I was looking for. In my second year when things slowly started coming back, I was so excited to meet my fellow graduate students in person and participate in as many communal events as possible. My attempts in finding community translated into taking on new responsibilities. First, I joined Rutgers University’s chapter of the Association for Women in Math (AWM) as a new organizer. I also started going to more seminars in person as well as attending coffee hour, which is a daily social hour with coffee and cookies. Because I was around often and showed interest in organizing by joining AWM, I was asked to take on more responsibilities around the department. I am now organizing a seminar, helping to set up for coffee hour, organizing our AWM chapter, and I’m on the board for two other service organizations. I said yes for many reasons: not realizing how much time these would take, not wanting to say no to older graduate students, and because I was excited to participate more actively. As I am now in my third year, I am studying for my oral qualifying exam, teaching, and trying to stay on top of organizational duties. I quickly realized that this semester I spread myself way too thin and felt unable to keep up with any of my obligations. I noticed a few older graduate students who also handled a lot of service work around the department, and I reached out to them for support. In my conversations with these older graduate students, it became clear that this is a pattern in academia - and one which, I believe, is not unique to Rutgers or to graduate students.
Service work is an umbrella term which encompasses all duties which are unrelated to teaching and research. Service can be an opportunity to have a voice in your department and your university. It’s also a chance as a graduate student to collaborate with peers. Service is also important to building community within a department. For example, through running seminars and holding panels, you can bond with peers and create an inviting atmosphere. Grad students can also keep the needs of other graduate students in the minds of department heads and faculty by participating on committees with faculty. Service work can also be undervalued, and because graduate students hold little power, being part of the conversation does not necessarily mean we can help to make any changes. Additionally, service work is not distributed evenly amongst graduate students which leaves certain students feeling overburdened.
There are many studies which show an imbalance across gender in who is carrying the brunt of the load of service work. Most recently, a study published in 2017 by Cassandra M. Guarino and Victor M. H. Borden finds data which supports that men in academia spend less time on service work and have fewer organizational duties. The study was done on professors across STEM at a variety of institutions. They write, “In the effort to achieve greater gender equity in academia, service has often been overlooked as a factor in the quest for parity, yet it merits close attention” [2, pg. 690]. The time commitment of service work indeed has an impact on productivity in other areas such as teaching and research, leading to differences in overall success in academia. Though many of these studies are done on faculty, this is a disparity that trickles down to graduate students as well. Graduate students are in a unique position: we are considered both staff and students and we have many responsibilities, but little power. In an insightful article, one graduate student of color who remains anonymous in the article describes her experience with service and the greater impact these responsibilities have on students from underrepresented groups. She writes, “...for students of color, doing service has a dark side. Service can make us hypervisible as problems and invisible as scholars.” She describes feeling drained and noticing “a disturbing pattern where students of color give [all] of ourselves until we are running on empty” [3]. This pattern she describes is one I have observed in my own department: there is a small pool of students who do most of the ‘institutional housekeeping,’ and these students are disproportionately women. This pool of students provides emotional and physical labor for the department without being able to create change. This pattern is exhausting and cyclic.
As I talked to other graduate students, I tried to figure out why this burden falls so heavily on a select few in the department. Similar to my experience, when students are asked to take on organizational duties often and have a hard time saying no, this becomes quite a slippery slope. People who are asked to take on department responsibilities are those seen as competent, which tends to be women who already take on a considerable load of service work. As I discussed this with other students, a common problem we all faced in regard to this was the pressure to say yes. There is a societal pressure for women to say yes, and this pressure is magnified for women graduate students and especially those from underrepresented groups who may already feel alienated in their department. In my own observations, when somebody becomes the go-to for service work, they are asked to do things frequently and are lauded as the glue which holds the department together. One 6th year grad student at Rutgers I spoke with notes that she has gotten used to being told “the department is going to fall apart without you here.” This sentiment exacerbates another common pressure which I and others have felt, which is “if I don’t do this task, it won’t get done.” These feelings can easily push somebody to take on too much. Once a student hits a point where they are overextending themselves with service work, like myself, it feels overwhelming - like you are constantly in a battle to catch your breath. The impact this has on graduate students is substantial. A former graduate student at Rutgers who I spoke with describes feeling so overburdened with responsibilities that even something small became really overwhelming. For example, during one particularly stressful day at coffee hour, which she was an organizer for, she “literally cried over spilled milk.” This burden of service work is a time sink which sneaks up on you through sending emails, advertising events, securing funding/getting reimbursed, etc.. The time spent takes away from research and teaching leaving students feeling behind and overextended.
After falling into this cycle myself and recognizing the larger pattern, I wanted to know how we could fix this. The truth is that this is not the responsibility of graduate students to fix. It is the responsibility of faculty, specifically the tenured men who have power in the department to create change. These changes include being transparent about the expectations of graduate students to do or not do service work. This first requires noticing the pattern of certain students taking on too much and supporting these students academically, financially, or emotionally. It is incumbent on college leadership to acknowledge and address these patterns and find ways to balance the use of graduate students as a workforce while supporting their academic growth. Conversations regarding the inequity of service work delegated to women is essential in creating an equitable learning environment for women in graduate programs.
When asking for advice, I have heard “your job is to be a student, and you should learn to say no.” This is not a solution, and it puts all of the blame on the graduate students, primarily women, who are struggling. This does not eliminate the pressures felt to say yes and does not address the fact that women are asked to do service work more frequently, especially once you become the go-to in your department. There are plenty of capable men who attend department events and are not asked to do service work, and the students who have fallen into this cycle pick up the slack.
As a student who feels that they have taken on too much service work and feels that they are spread too thin, here is some positive advice I have received and am still working on implementing:
When asked to take on another responsibility, take time before answering. Ask if you can take a day or two before getting back.
Ask yourself some questions:
Does this reasonably fit into my schedule? What is the time commitment?
Is this something meaningful to me? Am I passionate about this?
Will this help my career down the road? It is important to be aware that some things really don’t add to your CV, and professors aren’t always the best judge of this.
Write down a list of your main priorities and try to stick to it. Include things that are good for you that are not related to being a grad student.
Reframe saying no: Saying no to something now means you are opening yourself up to say yes to something more meaningful later.
Find an ally in an older graduate student or faculty member.
One way they can assist is by recognizing the responsibilities that a student is being tasked with and suggesting a change in how tasks are being delegated and to who. In this type of situation productive dialogue could look something like this…. “Although they would be good for the role, we can’t ask _____ to do everything, who else would be a good option?”
This is an issue that is not unique to graduate students, or math; it is a problem all across academia. Women carrying the burden of service work is one that heavily impacts many graduate students. Even if there is no ill intent from departments, putting no work into a solution exacerbates the problem. There is no passive option here.
Kayla Gibson (she/her) is a third year graduate student at Rutgers University with an interest in Algebraic Geometry. She is passionate about community-building and strives to create an inclusive environment in her department. In her spare time, she likes to run, sing, and participate in swing dancing.