By Jasmine Camero

As a first-generation student, my first day of college felt paramount, but, contrastingly, also felt isolating. Paramount because I was the first person in my Latinx family to attend a four-year university. Isolating because I was the first person in my Latinx family to attend a four-year university. This brought a great deal of pressure, but it also provided me with the time to learn, grow, and make my own evaluations about academia as I entered this new space. Growing up in a family-oriented Mexican-American household, a sense of community played a strong role in defining my personal and social upbringing. When I started college, I wondered where this familiar atmosphere of companionship would be. As the feeling of isolation would often consume me, I craved this sense of community even more, so I made my own. In doing this, my college experience was positively strengthened. Along the way I discovered that this is not something that is only limited to my own personal journey, but something that is fundamental in the social, emotional, mental, and physical development of the human race.

With this in mind, I was inspired to continue this mission to connect with others and nurture this community by shaping a platform for graduate students to develop relationships, create conversations, share experiences, give advice, and much more. With that being said, I would like to welcome you to the Learning through the Ranks: A Graduate Student Blog! My name is Jasmine Camero, the editor of the blog, and I am currently a second year Ph.D. student at Emory University. I am a first-generation Latina with hopes of creating a community among graduate students with a purpose to strengthen the unique and critical experience as we tackle many, sometimes underappreciated, roles on our doctoral journey. We must find our people because the relationships we cultivate and the connections we make with each other while sharing this journey can make the adventure more meaningful.

At the end of 2021, the AMS decided to end its blog platform, where graduate students previously had a blog. Graduate students still need a space to share their wide range of experiences coming from diverse backgrounds: socioeconomic, cultural, gender, race, orientations, ages, and more. The blog has found a new home at the MAA Math Values. Every month, graduate students from universities throughout the country in various research areas will have the floor to share with other members of the graduate student community. My objective for the blog is to create a space for graduate students to deliver their stories and highlight their experiences on an academic, professional, social, and personal level. The goal is to feature the integral navigation of the critical encounters of graduate school, while emphasizing the natural development at each phase of the process and building community among students. Learning through the Ranks is about gaining instruction, knowledge, and offering or accepting advice through each level of the graduate school experience. Every year that is spent in a mathematics graduate program comes with its own set of challenges that we must speak candidly about in order to help those who are currently going through it alongside us and those who come after us. This blog is meant to serve as the productive space to offer guidance, raise awareness, and most importantly, learn along the way… and maybe even do some interesting math while we are at it. Under my editorship, I would like the blog to spotlight the following topics:

• Diversity: Students come from diverse backgrounds: gender, race, countries, etc. and I would like to highlight the varying perspectives and experiences that contribute to involvement in a graduate program. These differences must not only be acknowledged but celebrated. This can include the personal and intimate navigation of being a person of color, first-generation student, underrepresented minority, and much more.

• Mental Health: Prioritizing mental health when being in graduate school is a positive step to building a healthy relationship with academia. Academia can be a toxic place for many, so it is especially significant to have a space for students to speak openly and candidly about mental health struggles.

• Self-care: It is important that students create a healthy relationship with establishing boundaries when it comes to being in a program. It is easy to prioritize work over personal well-being, but in this blog I would like to emphasize the importance of taking time for self-care practices.

• Experience within the “ranks”: Each year of a graduate program comes with its own set of struggles and successes. It would be beneficial to showcase advice and suggestions on the navigation of each year. For example, typically the first two years of a program are focused on coursework and qualifying exams. After this, depending on your specified research field, the responsibilities and expectations can look different. It would be constructive to provide details about studying for exams, building a CV, finding an advisor, traveling to conferences, internships, being on the job market, and more.

• Teaching: As a part of a graduate program, students are often expected to teach. My plan is to share tips and tricks, resources, templates, problem banks, ideas and more to assist with teaching while being a graduate student.

• Research: Graduate students take on many roles and being a researcher is one of them. It would be helpful to provide advice on how to get started on research, how to pick a problem to tackle, how to choose an advisor and who to work with, staying organized, and plenty more.

• Math: While there are many aspects that play an integral role in the graduate student experience, math is one that ties it all together. We are in graduate school because of our love and appreciation of math so we can utilize the blog to share any interesting ideas or problems, or just a fun puzzle or example!

• Professional Development: The graduate school experience isn’t limited to classwork, qualifying exams, research, and teaching. It is filled with a number of roles and activities that enhance involvement in a program. This can include running a Directed Reading Program (DRP), Math Circle, math competitions, organizing and directing a seminar or conference, giving talks, and much more.

While I would like to emphasize the outlined topics, Learning through the Ranks: A Graduate Student Blog is a space intended for the thoughts, opinions, and voices of graduate students. We want to hear your expressions, points of view, background, struggles, successes, leadership and encouragement. Please contact me, jasminecamero@emory.edu, to share any feedback or ideas you have about the blog or if you would like to contribute!

I am looking forward to the future of this blog with the MAA Math Values by reading and discovering the valued members of the graduate student community. Welcome to Learning through the Ranks: A Graduate Student Blog.

You can find an archive of the AMS Graduate Student Blog here.

Today is International Women’s Day! Join me in honoring all the powerful female mathematicians that have come before and all who are yet to come! Here you can find some resources from the Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM) for women at all levels of mathematics.

Jasmine Camero is a Mexican-American second year Mathematics Ph.D. student at Emory University studying Classical Algebraic Geometry.