Hi everyone, I'm going to send this email out today to grad-students@cs.toronto.edu. I welcome any feedback/suggestions on the email or planned activities, or if you know people want want to volunteer. And i'm not just spamming you, you will all see this soon anyway so think of it as a secret advance look :D.

You can make comments/suggested edits at this URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JJpLV61vh0Aq-Np5LY0Cj6KmFLHI7BjmisKn6t9n... ******

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Community/Seminar for Learning Grad "MetaSkills", such as coming up with research questions, finding jobs, project management, collaboration, managing stress:

Hi Everyone!

I am chairing the Grad MetaSkills Community, which is a novel take on previous years' Grad Skills Seminar. The kickoff meeting is Tue 1215-1:30 in BA 5256.

1.Goal & Examples of Grad MetaSkills.

The goal is to speed up your learning and practicing of the MetaSkills that are only implicitly acquired (or not acquired at all) from your typical course and research/internship activities.

Examples of questions this community can help you improve your answers to:

How do I come up with better research ideas?

How do I maximize chances of getting an academic/industry job I want?

How do I collaborate more effectively?

How do I manage & get help in managing stress & improving well-being?

2. Current Plan & How you can improve on it. Discussion Forum & Online Resources in Wiki/Google Drive

I'm very open as to what form this takes, and anyone with ideas and energy should step in and start making them happen.

As a prototype – something concrete to make *something* happen and provide something people can complain about and try to improve :D – here is the current plan. The community will start with:

A Google drive of resources. tiny.cc/gmsfolder Grad MetaSkills

Folder-editable https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CxlcuYrx7zfklKqsJVxm7mLBACkXOCIs

A discussion forum that acts as opt-in mailing list,and in person seminar

meetings. (need someone to set up a Google Group Q & A forum and get people added)

But now's your time to make suggestions or requests or say what you think should happen (and better yet, take some actions to make it happen!).

Feel free to reach out with questions or unsolicited advice, either in the Gdoc or emailing gradmetaskillschair@googlegroups.com.

3. Action item: Add requests for topics, links to resources, ideas to Gdoc at URL tiny.cc/gmsinput

Can you set a time to go to this Google doc and add some information?

tiny.cc/gmsinput Resources, Advice, Questions for Grad MetaSkills Community https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jKOiIGsqeQDFFpdK_ryB7PlO_KtpGNWbxIzwdv0mOEc/edit#

It could be: (a) any requests (topics or questions you want discussed), (b) links to resources (e.g. Blog posts,tweets, papers with good advice), or (c) ideas for what this community should do.

We will crowdsource this, and iteratively try things out.

4. Kickoff meeting Tue 26 Nov, 12:15-1:30 in BA 5256. Want to volunteer to help?

We also need some volunteers to help with different parts of the community, like setting up discussion forum, organizing online resources, recording talks. it could be anywhere from 2-10 hours a month (negotiable with you). We might be able to look into you being paid for this time.

The kickoff meeting is Tue 1215-1:30 in BA 5256. (we can pay for lunch if someone volunteers to organize it).

Look forward to talking more!

Joseph (& rest of Grad MetaSkills committee: Florian Skhurti, Amir Massoud Farahmand, Steve Easterbrook)

Joseph

Joseph Jay Williams www.josephjaywilliams.com Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto Intelligent Adaptive Interventions (IAI) research group