Hi. I'm organising a programme of seminars for postgraduate students for next academic year, for our PG association. The aim is to cover general aspects of being a postgraduate student, and things that would be of interest to PG students. Also to provide an opportunity for informal networking and peer support. Does any one have any examples of things they have found useful in their institution (particularly if you actually have a speaker in mind), or things they think might be useful? We havent done this before, so any advice would be appreciated. thanks!

PGAs provide a vital service for PG students. Partly because Research as a PG can become very lonely. It's not like undergrad where you share with 20odd people and share a kitchen. It's the beginnings of real life where you work a long job, often with little contact. You don't meet people at lectures and it's fairly solitary. I'd usually recommend PG students try to be as involved with a PGA as possible and acting as a TA gets a few pennies and you get to meet people which is a bit more sociable

We had two days of induction when I started my PhD - they are a good idea, if nothing else they give a bit of structure to an otherwise structureless three years ("that was when I started"). Two things I didn't like:
1. everyone from the faculty of science was grouped together so it was quite vague. I don't remember having anything school-specific, so if we had something it musn't have been any good
2. we had a whole day of research talks (with a little 'personal experience' bit thrown in) from second year PhD students (again, from ALL sciences wasn't a good idea). Their comments were fairly balanced - a mixture of positives and negatives, but I remember someone telling us 'your supervisor will become your best friend' - I think the emphasis should have been much more 'you are coming to work here, act like an employee' - it was all a bit misleading really