Perspective: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Graduate Life at HU

I appreciated the recent issue of The Hilltop which began to focus on the possible points of improvement the university can have. In the spirit of accumulating such perspectives which might aid this institution in moving forward, I would like to share my struggles as a graduate student, as well as those of my colleagues.

It is important to note these struggles of graduate students for several reasons. First and foremost, we are positioned as the cutting edge of research. It is expected of us to advance the knowledge of our respective fields. Our lives do not end with this institution; they begin with it.

After we complete our graduate programs and move on, our new institutions will expect us to come with a certain depth of knowledge--especially coming from a research-one institution like Howard.

It is also the case that as graduate students, we are entrusted with teaching basic courses to the undergraduate student population. With our teaching and our research, we are also representing Howard in other parts of the country and at other institutions through conferences.

There are a number of things that are the good in this university for graduate students. We receive support to go to conferences and represent our institution. Our professors are very knowledgeable and they are very good role models for the kind of professors and researchers we would like to be. The depth of knowledge and number of perspectives we are exposed to are unparalleled. These amazing qualities, however, get shadowed by the administrative side of the institution.

As it is easy to list the good qualities of Howard, it is also quite easy, unfortunately, to name the bad. Just to give a few examples: The room where we get together as graduate students and teaching assistants is extremely deficient. The wireless internet connection works--rarely. For close to 20 students sharing the same small office and six tiny cubicles, there is only one computer.

Some of my colleagues didn't get paid so much into the semester that they weren't able to buy their books for their own classes. When we teach, our classrooms lack basic infrastructure--save for the chalkboard. When we try to do our research, we have very limited access to internet databases. These are only to name a few.

The ugly comes into play when we compare Howard with other universities in the city. While we are extremely grateful for the amount of intellectual accumulation and the high level of brainpower present in the university, this amazing quality is betrayed by the poor support by the administrative side of the institution.

When we engage with other universities through consortium, we stand in awe as we witness the polished classrooms, standardized infrastructure in every classroom, such as classroom fixed computers and projection material, and vast access to internet journal databases.

This comparison is ugly precisely because Howard University is not just another university. It owes a great deal to its legacy--at least for all the advertisement that legacy provides to HU.

While other universities have no such legacy to protect, they do everything in their power to project the right kind of image of who they are. And while we have such an image powered by our legacy, nothing is being done to enhance, or at least, to protect it.

Such memories should not be any part of the Howard experience.