GradPSYCH - January 2012 - (Page 33)

by ELizabETh LEis-NEWMaN W hen Heather Armstrong moved to Texas for her clinical psychology internship, she also moved 30 boxes of paper she accumulated during her graduate training at the University of Indianapolis. All those business cards, studies, conference papers and notes made the organized student within her scream. “I’ve learned after eight years of graduate school that the less paper, the better,” says Armstrong, now an intern at Central Texas Veterans Health Care System. Today, she keeps a digital copy of her important information. Much of it — including her contacts and calendar — lives on her smart phone. “I try to keep everything in one place,” she says. Keeping your professional contacts organized and easily accessible is especially essential for graduate students since those names may be the critical link between you and your internship, next job or future research collaboration. Whether you use an iPhone, iPad, Microsoft Outlook or an old-fashioned Rolodex, create a system that will help you remember the names — and interests — of these key contacts. Online tools How many contacts can one person have? The human neocortex can only juggle about 150 friendships, according to Robin Dunbar, PhD, an evolutionary anthropology professor at Oxford University. Historically, smaller communities allowed everyone to have the same network. “In, say, an Amish community, one person’s 150 is everybody else’s 150,” Dunbar says. But today’s typical student, who has traveled internationally, moved from state to state and had a series of jobs, has a far broader network than his or her ancestors. Online tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn can’t replace in-person interaction, but they can keep tenuous relationships from evaporating. “Those friendships are fragile,” Dunbar says. “The quality of our relationships can drop off quite fast” if we don’t keep up through phone, email or meeting in person, says Dunbar. While connecting across a wide swath of people is important — today’s intern could be tomorrow’s boss — in order to maintain boundaries consider separating your professional and personal contacts, says Rachel Dinero, PhD, assistant professor of psychology at Cazenovia College. She uses separate email accounts for her work and personal life, and blocks status updates from her students on Facebook. Professors “don’t want to friend someone they just evaluated,” says psychologist David Evans, PhD, of Psychster Inc., a Seattle firm that specializes in the psychology of social media. In fact, many people reserve Facebook for social acquaintances and friends and use another site, such as LinkedIn, for professional contacts “On LinkedIn, when you accept a contact, you are able to say how you are connected,” Evans says. “It is a living, breathing, de facto CV.” Diane Keyser Wentworth, PhD, professor in the Fairleigh Dickinson University department of psychology, is also a fan of LinkedIn, which she uses, along with Outlook, to store her contacts. Wentworth logs in to LinkedIn to look up where professional acquaintances and former colleagues work. “LinkedIn ... lets you learn more about people on the job, which is a plus,” she says. A benefit of using social media to manage your contacts is that when your contacts update their information, it’s done automatically for you — no need to type in or scratch out in your own electronic or paper address books, Wentworth notes. The downside of using social media to keep in touch with professional contacts? Reduced privacy, Evans says. “We are living in an age where who we are connected to is public,” Evans says. A paper trail Other students, including Armstrong, rely on a different technology to organize their contacts: the cell phone. “I can categorize people into groups, including ‘personal,’ and it’s helpful that it’s always on hand,” says Armstrong. But the risk of storing all that critical data on a cell phone gradPSYCH • January 2012 • 33 

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of GradPSYCH - January 2012

GradPSYCH - January 2012
Contents
Psychology grad school enrollment drops, despite record numbers of applicants
Students leave their iPods at home during ‘crunch time’
Media Picks
Chair’s Corner
Odd Jobs
Research Roundup
Hot careers: Video game design and development
Friends and co-workers
Time to bail?
Scaling Mount Publication
Need to heal thyself?
Staying connected
Matters to a Degree
Power up your PowerPoint
Dissertations vs. diapers
Searching for answers
Bulletin Board
Jobs, internships, postdocs and other opportunities
The Back Page

GradPSYCH - January 2012

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