Starting life as a postgraduate is exciting, but it can also be extremely daunting. While as an undergrad you would be in the same boat as all your classmates for three years, navigating a difficult but well-mapped-out route, as a postgraduate it’s easy to feel like you’re in a lifeboat by yourself in the uncharted waters of academia. Thankfully, at the Library we offer a number of different recurring events and programmes and services for postgraduates to help make sure you don’t feel lost at sea (time to drop anchor on this tenuous naval metaphor)…
We have two Library-managed spaces dedicated to postgraduate study – the Postgrad Hub (or PG Hub) in Senate House, and the Wolfson Research Exchange (or REx) on the 3rd Floor Extension of the Library. Both spaces require student card access, and although the PG Hub is open to any postgrad student with their ID card, the REx is a space reserved for research postgraduates such as PhD students. As part of the Library, it has the same opening hours as the rest of the Library, while the Postgrad Hub is open 9am-midnight every day of the week. Both spaces also have bookable rooms – the PG Hub’s are perfect for student-led group work, while the REx’s versatile spaces are good for research-led events such as seminars and conferences.
In these spaces, the Community Engagement Team holds a number of regular events to bring postgraduate students together. Every Tuesday 3pm-4pm in the PG Hub’s Relaxation Room (our oasis of calm filled with giant beanbags, cushions and games), we hold our PG Tips sessions, where students can grab coffee, tea and biscuits and chat to our Postgraduate Mentors about all things related to postgrad life. (For those who can’t make it, you can also get advice from our mentors via our online mentoring platform). For research students, every Thursday 10:30am-12pm we run the ever-popular Research Refresh in the REx, where you can grab coffee and cake, chat and network with other researchers, or just join in a game of Exploding Kittens, Dobble or Sushi Go to take your mind off the thesis.
We also run regular ‘wellbeing hours’ every week in the REx (Tuesdays 2pm-3pm) and the PG Hub (Wednesdays 2pm-3pm), where students can grab a tea or coffee or piece of fruit and chat to members of the Wellbeing Support Services team, who are on hand to give advice and answer any questions.
Also, to celebrate our global postgraduate community here at Warwick, so we put on many different cultural activities over the year – from Christmas and Easter to Lunar New Year, Eid Al-Fitr and Dia de Muertos – for students to join in, meet people and experience new cultures. Keep an eye on our events page over the year to find out what’s coming up!
All of our events and programmes are to help you develop and succeed in your postgraduate study – and naturally, skills development and workshops play a big part in this. These include our peer-led workshops on academic, personal and professional skills delivered as part of our On Track programme (and you can find resources from last year’s programme via Moodle). If you’re struggling to put down the phone, close the web browser and get some serious work done, you can join us every Tuesday morning at Write Here, Write Now, our focused productivity sessions interspersed with even more tea, coffee and biscuits!
And remember – the best way to find out about all the events we run is to keep an eye on our website, or to follow our social media including the PG Hub Facebook and Twitter, and the REx Facebook and Twitter!