Challenges Faced by Graduate Students and Strategies to Overcome Them

This article discusses the challenges faced by graduate students and provides strategies to overcome them. It covers topics such as communication skills, teamwork skills, time management, and business skills. The challenges include apprentice, presentation, t-shirt, and hotel challenges. The article also includes an action plan to improve skills and achieve career goals.

Graduate Challenge

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Communication skills..................................................................................................................3
Teamwork skills..........................................................................................................................4
Time management and meeting skills.........................................................................................5
Business skills.............................................................................................................................6
Action plan..................................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSIONS..............................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
For the graduate student it is very important to generate the skills and development for
the development of their own. As being a graduate student it is necessary to develop the skills
and make yourself ready either for the university or for the professional life (O’Brien, Wittmer
and Ebrahimi, 2017). The major challenges which are faced by the students are time-
management, balance in their work-life and personal life, accompanying the stress and also they
often struggle in maintaining the academic life with their social life. I use my personal action
plan by considering my skills as my strength and weakness like communication skills, teamwork,
time management and many businesses skills. To improve these skills the challenges I faced are;
Apprentice challenge, Presentation challenge, T-shirt challenge and hotel challenge. To
overcome these challenges I used a action plan for my career growth and development.
MAIN BODY
These challenges which are faced by the individual in the organisation will effect the
business environment and the individual growth also. In my case these challenges will help my
in strengthening the skills and understanding. While working in the organisation these challenges
are faced by me in order to handle the cases and daily problems of the company.
Communication skills
Communication skills refer to the skills which help to make you more confident and
communicate effectively with the others. As it is the bilateral communication process where you
transfer the information from one person to another (French and Bruckman, 2020). There are
three type of communication are verbal, non-verbal and written communication. I have a good
and effective communication skills and knowledge.

Communication skills help to overcome the challenges as described below:
 Apprentice challenge: This relate with the situations to face the challenges to managing
the other employees in a way to know the best productivity and enhance the creativity of
the employees. And to overcome this challenge communication skills help by interacting
more with the employees. I can overcome this challenge by making more communication
formal or informal way. This type of challenge will help the individual to overcome the
issues in the business. Like dealing with the other employees to handle their personal or
professional issue.
 Presentation challenge: In this challenge a person face the issue related to the present
the information clearly and effectively (Webber and Burns, 2020). As this presentation
need to show the data and accuracy to the audience. To overcome this challenge it is
important to be confident and a good communication skills. I can present my skills here
and do a good presentation.
 T-Shirt challenge: Here, a person is assigned to complete the task in which they are
needed to print a t-shirt, with most effective motivation quotes and messages. This will
help in increasing the sale. And as I have a good communication skills so I can enlarge
the sale with more effectively.
 Hotel challenge: This challenge reflect how a person deal with the clients and to solve
the problems arises by the customer. With the help of communication skills I can solve
the problems of the clients. And by communicate with them, it is easy to influence their
decisions.

Teamwork skills
This skills is essential to get the success at your work, no matter what is the industry or
job designation you have. Working effectively with the clients, peer employees, colleagues and
top management (Mavromoustakis, Mastorakis and Batalla, 2016). A company which have good
team work employees, then it became a healthy and high functioning workplace. But I am very
bad in teamwork and can't face the challenges while working in a team or managing the team.
 Apprentice challenge: As I am not good in team work, so this challenge may be became
more difficult for me and can disturb my career. To overcome this challenge I have to
build my teamwork skills. As this process involve the high coordination with the other
employees, and due to my weakness this process affect me at high cost. Teamwork skill
are needed in the business, which are needed to make the relation with the other peer
member of the organisation.
 Presentation challenge: to make the presentation the teamwork is needed as it is not
possible that a person have all the skills and knowledge (Stawicki and et.al., 2019). So
here the team skill are necessary. And if I am not able to gather the information from the
team than I will not able to make the presentation.
 T-Shirt challenge: Making a new and innovative idea to print the t-shirt, team help is
needed. As to coordinate with the other members of the group and make the best idea
which improve the sales. So this challenge will increase my burden.
 Hotel challenge: To communicate with the clients and other employee the team work
and research is needed. And as I am bad in working with the team this will gives me a
major difficulty in overcoming with this challenge in the company.

Time management and meeting skills
Time management is the skill which is required top manage the business activities on the
time with effective nature (Concerto and et.al., 2017). It is the task which is used to organized
and manage the people with their skills and abilities so that they can easily complete the task on
the time.
 Apprentice challenge: When it comes to managing the team with the efficient time
management. It means for managing the employees and solve their issues with some
technical stuff it is important for the managers to deal all the issues with the time
management. I can handle this challenge as I am good in allocating the time and
distribute them within the employees. This challenge is overcome with the team work,
which are helpful for the individual person. As team management and time management
help mine in order to overcome with this challenge.
 Presentation challenge: In presenting the presentation the most important thing is time
management of the slides (de Alencar and de Oliveira, 2016) (Rotenberg, 2016). And
time managing in between the slides and your explaining time. As I have good time
management ability so I can easily overcome with this challenge which help to make
improvement in the my career plan.
 T-Shirt challenge: Completing the assigned work in given time is very important, while
completing the t-shirt challenge it is important to take care of the time slot in which you

have to prepare the t-shirt. I can handle this challenge as I can easily communicate with
others and manage the time to complete the work.
 Hotel challenge: Here the serving effective service to the clients are important and the
task which is completed on time is always be good and accurate. Complying the work
with the others and manage the time according to team work, can help the individual to
overcome the challenge by managing the time.
Business skills
Business skills are the ability to work in the company with completing the actions of
consumers and organisation work, and this knowledge will help the growth of the performance
of the company (Bright and Graham, 2016). These skills are also known as the soft skills like,
leadership, communication, team management, decision making, problem solving and many
more.
 Apprentice challenge: To managing other it is very important to about the business
skills. To overcome this challenge business skills are important and as to coordinate and
make plan in the organisation. Managing skills are needed to be so important in the
apprentice challenge in order to manage the time and staff of the organisation.
 Presentation challenge: To overcome this challenge, business skills help as it include,
communication, time management and leadership so to make a good presentation it is
very important to have the business skills. I have some business skills and needed to
developed some in my career path.
 T-Shirt challenge: Business skills help in overcoming the T-shirt challenge for the
individual work. As it help the person to develop the skills of interpersonal ability. I can
overcome the challenge I have good creativity.

 Hotel challenge: If a person have business skills then they can easily overcome this
challenge and reach the company to the profitability ratio. I have those skills by which I
can take this challenge and make the visible career path and get the success over there.
All these challenges are consider while working in the organisation and at the same time
these challenges are helpful in order to completing the internal swot analysis and face the issues
and problems of the company which are faced by individual being an employee.
Action plan
Action plan is the detailed outline process which are needed to complete the goal in
future (Hill, Woodley and Goodwin, 2018). In detail we can say that action plan is the sequence
where the starting of the objective, steps for completing and implementing the objective and the
key points to get the success from achieving the objective are considered. This action plan is
based on the my skills and knowledge evaluation and how I considered my plan in order to
achieve the weakness and improve the strength to get the success. For this I need to make the
SMART objective. Which must be specific; means the goals must be specific, measurable;
whatever the goal is decided is measurable and comparable, achievable; goals are achievable,
realistic; they are realistic rather than imaginary and time bound; set some particular time in
order to get the goals.
My SMART objectives are:
“To improve the team management skills by participating in team work assignment
within next 6 months for increase my professional career development by 30%.”
“To improve the decision making skill by participating in the time bound projects where I
have to make the decision regarding the completion of task in 3 months in order to increase my
decision making performance by 25%.”
CONCLUSIONS
From the above report it is concluded that there are lots of problems which are faced by
the graduates and to overcome the challenges, a person should analyse their personal skills and
development ability which can make the success in their career path and at the same time can
become the hurdle in the path. Analyses of skills are required by student, professional or learner
in order to create the more efficiency in their work and manage all the activities. The challenges
are apprentice, presentation, t-shirt and hotel challenge which create the hurdle in the career path

and to overcome this communication, time management, teamwork and business skills are
needed the most. To improve the learning and development it is important to overcome the
challenges.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bright, L. and Graham Jr, C. B., 2016. Predictors of graduate student satisfaction in public
administration programs. Journal of Public Affairs Education. 22(1). pp.17-34.
Concerto, C. and et.al., 2017. Academic stress disrupts cortical plasticity in graduate students.
Stress. 20(2), pp.212-216.
de Alencar, E. M. L. S. and de Oliveira, Z. M. F., 2016. Creativity in Higher Education
According to Graduate Programs' Professors. Universal journal of educational
research. 4(3). pp.555-560.
French, R. H. and Bruckman, L. S., 2020. Learnings from developing an applied data science
curricula for undergraduate and graduate students. MRS Advances. 5(7). pp.347-353.
Hill, J. M. F., Woodley, L. and Goodwin, M., 2018. Simulation to prepare graduate nursing
students for clinical faculty role. Nursing education perspectives. 39(5). pp.319-321.
Mavromoustakis, C. X., Mastorakis, G. and Batalla, J. M. Eds., 2016. Internet of Things (IoT) in
5G mobile technologies (Vol. 8). Springer.
O’Brien, K., Wittmer, D. and Ebrahimi, B.P., 2017. Behavioral ethics in practice: Integrating
service learning into a graduate business ethics course. Journal of Management
Education. 41(4). pp.599-616.
Rotenberg, R., 2016. The art and craft of college teaching: A guide for new professors and
graduate students. Routledge.
Stawicki, S. P. and et.al., 2019. Contemporary Topics in Graduate Medical Education. BoD–
Books on Demand.
Webber, K. L. and Burns, R., 2020. Increases in Graduate Student Debt in the US: 2000 to 2016.
Research in Higher Education. pp.1-24.

APPENDIX
T-SHIRT CHALLENGES
PRESENTATION CHALLENGES

HOTEL CHALLENGES