Welcome to I Was Told There'd Be Food, where you can convince graduate students to attend anything with promises of sustenance. We hope that IWTTBF has been that for many of you during this series and thank you for joining us for a year in the life.

Making it through the final weeks of another semester? This week Jen and Alex discuss the recent firestorm over technology in the classroom, and the new and old approaches to education which go into a 21st century higher education experience.

A serious topic for the holiday weekend. This week Jen and Alex discuss the details of the proposed tax reform bills in Congress and how they will impact graduate students and institutes of higher education. This is not a fun topic, but one every graduate student should understand thoroughly, especially with the passing of the House of Representative's version of the bill last week.

Jen breaks down the numbers: https://www.recollectionhistory.com/blog/2017/11/14/is-it-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it

More Details from NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/11/14/563130814/heres-how-the-new-tax-plan-could-hurt-graduate-students

Ethan Siegel, "The GOP Tax Plan Will Destroy Graduate Education," :https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/11/07/the-gop-tax-plan-will-destroy-graduate-education/#213eb2c63d2f

"....pouring out yourself a cup of ambition." as Ms. Parton would say. Though the academic job market is the dark cloud over many a graduate student conversation, there are ways to help prepare for the search and interview process. This week we review everything you should know about academic job interviews and hopefully help you feel a bit more prepared for application season.

Finding work-life balance in graduate school is always a challenge. Managing that time while also raising a family can seem almost impossible, by comparison. This week, we discuss what it's like to be both a graduate student and a parent, along with our special guest, Macey.

One of the two big milestones of graduate school, your comprehensive exams are potentially the most stressful experience on the road to graduation. This week we'll discuss our own strategies for completing the comps, offering suggestions of things you can start doing now — seriously, today — to prepare yourself. Or just indulge in the Schadenfreude of not having to worry about your own exams any longer.

Form and function - old and new - this week we tackle academic tech and the graduate school experience. Bibliographic and image editing software are new staples for the academic career track and yet so few historians have been keen to adopt them. We discuss the possible whys and offer insight on our favorite scholarly software.

We'd also like your suggestions on the best new academic software worth adopting!

"Historians and the Technologies of Research" -

https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/october-2017/historians-and-the-technologies-of-research