Thriving in Higher Education: Voices of Four Female Graduate Students

Abstract

This study explored thriving in the context of graduate studies as perceived by four female students attending master’s and doctoral programs in a Canadian university. Thriving is an all-encompassing approach that extends beyond meeting the academic objectives (Schreiner, Pothoven, Nelson, & McIntosh, 2009). Recently, there have been extensive studies regarding thriving in the undergraduate context (e.g. Berea, Tsvetovat, Daun-Barnett, Greenwald, & Cox 2015; Schreiner, 2010a; 2013; Schreiner, Kammer, Primose, & Quick, 2011). Despite the uniqueness of the graduate demographic compared to the undergraduate (Gansemer-Topf, Ross & Johnson, 2006), little is known about graduate students’ thriving processes and their fulfillment with their academic experience. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand graduate students’ perceptions and experiences of thriving, as well as the factors that influenced their thriving in graduate school. Data were collected from four female graduate students through semi-structured interviews and analyzed using a deductive thematic approach. Thriving Perceptions and Experiences, Supports for Thriving, and Barriers to Thriving were the pre-determined themes utilized for this study. Supports and barriers were further branched into intrapersonal, interpersonal, and institutional factors. The findings of this study are presented in two sections. The first section highlighted thriving conceptualization in graduate studies through individuals’ perceptions and experiences. These findings illustrate that thriving in graduate studies is unique, multi-faceted, and malleable. For master’s participants in particular, thriving additionally signified a profound academic transition. In the second section, I presented the conditions that affected thriving, which included notions of connectedness, contribution, mentorship, compartmentalization, and imposter syndrome. Although similar to undergraduate students in many ways, there were distinct characteristics pertaining to thriving among the participants of this study, leading to implications for future research and practice. Keywords: graduate students, graduate school, positive mental health and well-being, thriving