Posted on by Joyful Mdhluli · 1 Comment

How I found my sisters in Science.

Growing up in a family with three older brothers, a whole bunch of male cousins and no sisters; I have always had problems with communicating with females. It came as no shock to me when I found myself in a male-dominated field such as Physics. Over the years I have accumulated close female friends that can only be counted with one hand. This blog post is not about all my failed friendships with females but rather about my experience with a special group of ladies I survived a year with (which is a big deal for me).

In April I came across a link on Twitter of an article titled “Want black women students to stay in STEM? Help them find role models who look like them” published in Science Daily. This article made me reflect on all my attempts to always find a group of people I can relate to. I mean I get along very well with males but at the end of the day, I would always question why I am never part of that group of girls having fun at the library lawns or at the club wearing matching outfits. The few female friends I have are all not part of the STEM field and while they are there for me during my ups and downs in this postgraduate journey, I feel like something is still missing. We have very few women in Physics in South Africa, let alone the world so trying to find a role model who looks like me is a big reach. So the next best thing is to find other postgraduate students who are in the STEM field like me.

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Long story short, last year in February I came across a Twitter post from Black Women in Science (BWIS) appealing to black females in the STEM field to apply to become members. Like all other things in my life, I took the chance and applied to be a member. To my surprise, I got accepted as one of the few Johannesburg fellows that were accepted to be part of the programme. So let me tell you about who and what BWIS is, well BWIS is a registered NPC which aims to deliver capacity development interventions that target young black women scientists and researchers. The purpose of BWIS is to develop professional research and science conduct, leadership and mentorship skills for women within all scientific disciplines, in tertiary intuitions and professional environments nationally and internationally. They promote a postgraduate culture amongst African students and improve their academic experience by providing support, training, a professional network and exposure to opportunities.

As mentioned above, they focus on all scientific disciplines and the first time I finally got to meet all the other BWIS fellows, I wondered to myself how many of them could possibly help me if I am the only person doing Physics. Little did I know what an amazing experience this would turn in to. The programme consisted of three workshops that focused on Scientific Writing Skills, Business Skills and Development and the third workshop gave us time to work and present our Sustainability Projects where we could either work in groups on individuals. I was fortunate enough to find myself in a group with seven incredible ladies where we worked on a project focusing on recycling.

The cherry on top of this whole experience would have to be the Gala dinner we had in April this year. All the ladies got to dress up and everyone look absolutely stunning. I had never been in a room full of beautiful ladies in my entire life. Prizes were given, food was eaten and conversations were shared. Our group even won the “Best Pitch Award”, which was completely unexpected if you ask me. The year I spent as part of the BWIS fellow has been insightful and memorable. I got the opportunity to meet amazing people in STEM and we have all gotten to share our journeys as postgraduates and working professionals.  I am now a BWIS alumnus and part of their mentorship programme. I am very grateful to the BWIS team for taking the risk and choosing me to be one of their fellows because I have found my sisters in science.

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The purpose of this post was to basically share the importance of finding people who you can relate with. Not necessarily on a social platform but on a more “professional” platform. Whether it be “Women in Science”, “Women in Engineering” or even organizations/forums that are within your field. As long as you find a place where you belong and can be uplifted in your career. I read somewhere about the “Power of the Pack: Women who support women are more successful.” After you have found your happy place, go out there and be someone else’s happy place by mentoring our young girls to join the STEM field because everyone keeps asking: Why aren’t there more women in science?

Posted on by Joyful Mdhluli

Am I a good or bad postgraduate student?

Over the years since I started my postgraduate career, I have come across a lot of different kinds of people. I have seen students who spend all day from 6 am to 9pm (or even later) at the office; those who disappear from campus for weeks in a row; those who spend all of their time in the lab doing experiments; those who are in the office every day with Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and their email (to make themselves feel better) tabs opened; and those who come occasionally for tea time and leave immediately after lunch. People are different and depending on what research you are doing, there are different expectations for each one of us.

Those doing theoretical/computational research do not necessarily have to be on campus every day (if they have a really good internet connection at home); as compared to those who have experimental work and are required to be in the lab to get experiments done. Like I said, people are different and we do different research, therefore, there are different expectations for each one of us. It is not fair or right to expect all of us to have the same work schedule. Some people work better at home than others. Just like Sesethu mentioned in her July blog post, all fields matter and we shouldn’t look down on others because they appear to not be putting as much effort into their studies like we do.

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I am one of those people who do experimental research and is expected to be on campus most of the time doing “experiments” but strangely enough, I fall under the “occasionally showing on campus for tea and leave after lunch” group. In the beginning, everyone would comment on how scarce I was and that I must be working really hard in the lab doing “experiments”. I would laugh and agree with them to make myself feel better that I am working very hard and being a good student. Unfortunately for me, this lie caught up with me and now everyone is shocked to see me on campus after 3pm. Is there such a thing as being a “good” postgraduate student? Well, I googled it and to my surprise, there wasn’t much on the topic but I did find something worth reading.

I am particularly happy with this one set of slides I found by Dr Sherry Beaumont. Nowhere does it say that I need to be in the office all day every day to be a good postgraduate student (which is fantastic news for me since I struggle with that). The slides give pointers on what the definition of a successful graduate student, what the characteristics of a good graduate student are and how to be a good graduate student. It is very consoling to me that I can say I follow some of the tips given but I still need to work very hard on this “being a good postgraduate student” thing.

I decided to change my search from “how to be a good postgraduate student” to “how to be a successful postgraduate student”. This search, on the other hand, yielded many results, I literally could not choose which page to open first. Since I like things summarized for me, I decided to go with a post by The Grad Student Way.  They published a post on 10 ways to be a successful PhD student; while choosing the right University is one of the most important things to consider, it is also important to stay passionate about your PhD. It is also very important to learn as much as we can, network, communicate, work hard, preserve, stay productive, read and publish. The last two are very important; you can never read enough, there are so many published papers out there for us to learn from and the best way to show all of your hard work is through publishing.

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If the journey to a Masters or PhD degree is not straightforward, how are we expected to behave in a certain way? There is no such thing as a good postgraduate; as long as you put in effort, dedication, commitment and stay passionate then you will conquer the bumpy road towards the red gown. Let us continue soldiering on to become successful postgraduates students, I mean, why be good if you can be successful?