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At last we've arrived at the Final Round for UCSB 2015 Grad Slam. It's been a long, weary road to the Finals and lots of tears were shed on the way, mostly mine. If you weren't one of the hundreds in attendance at Corwin Pavilion on Friday afternoon to bear witness, this is what went down.

When the childhood home of Melissa Barthelemy, a sixth-year graduate student of Public History, burned down in Ojai when she was eight years old, she and her family may have initially thought they only escaped with a few photo albums. But, what they eventually learned was they had gained life lessons in community, compassion, and the generosity of others.

Sara Sutherland is a Ph.D. student in UCSB's economics department. She is charismatic, driven, and lucky – she's graduating! She completed her M.A. in economics here at UCSB and now teaches business and environmental accounting for the Bren School.

UC Santa Barbara welcomes 841 new graduate students into its ranks this week. Here, we break down the statistics on our incoming graduate student cohort and introduce you to several of our new students.

Four UC Santa Barbara Ph.D. students will have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity this summer to meet and mingle with 70 Nobel Laureates on a picturesque island in Germany. The four – Stacy Copp of Physics, Matthew Gebbie and Gregory Su of Materials, and Nikki Marinsek of Dynamical Neuroscience – are among 672 young scientists from 88 countries selected to participate in the 65th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting June 28 to July 3.

They walked like elephants, buzzed like bumblebees, swam like a school of fish, and hugged like long-lost friends. All while barefoot. These were UC Santa Barbara graduate students and postdocs, learning the fundamentals of stage presence in Drama Instructor Jeff Mills’ four-hour “Stage Training for Academic Presenters” workshop.

Lisa Slavid says she has “always doodled in the margins of everything.” So when we requested her doodles for the pages of the GradPost as a Valentine’s Day 2015 gift to our graduate students, she was only too happy to oblige.

In this installment of the GradPost column, "The Doctor Is In," three members of the UC Santa Barbara faculty answer graduate students' questions about the academic publishing process, including how much one should publish as a grad student and how to deal with the rigors of peer review. We hear from Dr. Richard Church, Dr. John Majewski; and Dr. Leila Rupp.

On Friday, January 16, Professors Karen Myers (Communication) and David Seibold (Technology Management Program) led a workshop on job interviews and negotiating a job offer.

Fellowships and grants may seem like free money, but you still have to declare it as Other Income and pay taxes on all or part of the funds. So how do you figure out how much of the money counts as taxable income?

Being in graduate school is hard. Being a parent in graduate school is even harder. In this Spotlight article, we talk to four graduate students about being a student parent.

Don't miss out on funding during your graduate career. Follow these tips and tricks to make sure you avoid the most common mistakes graduate students make while searching for funding.

Whether she’s in a field, a zoo, or an operating room, Dr. Véronique LaCapra – a 1992 Towbes fellow who earned her Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology from UCSB in 2000 – gets to tell compelling stories in her “never boring” career as a science, environment, and health reporter for a local NPR affiliate station in St. Louis.

The 2014 Grad Slam Final round featured 10 finalists looking to earn the title of Champion. Find out who took home the grand prize of $5,000!

Dr. Tracy Pintchman, professor of Religious Studies at Loyola University Chicago, is grateful to have been the first recipient of a Towbes Fellowship at UC Santa Barbara. She earned her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from UCSB in 1992.