Making Navigation Visible II: How Skills and Supports Shape Graduate Student Experiences

Graduate student success in physics is often evaluated in terms of research productivity and disciplinary knowledge, while the skills students use to navigate graduate school remain less visible and underexplored. Building on the previous talk on navigational approaches, this talk focuses on the specific skills that enable students to move from surviving to thriving. The approaches (reactive to proactive) describe how students navigate graduate school, while the skills describe what enables that navigation to be effective. Using semi-structured interviews with physics doctoral students, we identify these skills, including self-awareness, strategic flexibility, temporal thinking, environmental assessment, community contribution, and resource utilization. These skills emerge as dynamic practices cultivated throughout graduate school, fostering thriving in complex academic environments. We also examine how departmental supports and structures shape the enactment of these skills, enabling or constraining students' ability to navigate their programs.