At the dissertation stage of your graduate program, a fellowship can be a critical resource, especially if your research requires money for travel, equipment, supplies, and time to collect data and write.
There’s no perfect formula for negotiating graduate school. However, many people have thought about and written on this topic, and everyone who has gone to graduate school seems to agree on some common themes.
Have you ever emerged from the office recently only to find that everyone is gone? Do you sometimes feel that your department colleagues have just up and vanished? Are you feeling like the last person on earth?
Do you remember your first semester as a graduate student? Or are you there right now? Most new graduate students soon find that they are expected to be more independent in their programs than they were as undergraduates.