My early experience of graduate school was overwhelming. Having transitioned from software engineering to history, I struggled to keep up with the reading from before the first class even began. I was terrified of sounding stupid, misinterpreting a passage, or not knowing the historiography well enough. I admired my peers and stood in awe of them, secretly certain I was incapable of their eloquence or command of the field. I watched as professors woke up from sound slumber during a seminar just in time to ask a question so brilliantly that they could have, somehow, won a book prize.

Of the many skills required to successfully muddle through graduate school—and academia more broadly—intellectual citizenship is the most rarely taught, at least formally. Active membership in the intellectual community of a department and the broader discipline can seem secondary to the milestones of graduate work. I found that, on the contrary, learning to be a part of an intellectual community was critical to my success and really my happiness in that stage and in the academy writ large. After all, the whole endeavor of scholarship depends on that community past and present, whose work informs the questions, substance, and terms that we take up as historians. I learned that it took and takes practice to give useful feedback, to receive it graciously, and to ask good questions. I also learned that content is more important than form, especially when expressing complicated ideas.

I was very fortunate to have mentors who took the time to teach me, both explicitly and by example, a few ways to be a dutiful intellectual citizen. I do not pretend to know everything. Indeed, each new conference, workshop, archive, and institution has offered more opportunities to join scholarly community and to learn from others. It’s also true that every person and place is different. Could I go back in time, however, to the beginning of graduate school, I would have given myself the following tips:

It really is okay to not know things.

In my second year of graduate school, I went to a seminar that was well within my wheelhouse. The paper under discussion was about politics and slavery in the early American republic, though the audience included department members from all different subfields. When it came time for questions, I watched in amazement as the MacArthur-winning scholar in front of me (who was not an early Americanist) Googled “federalism.” Not ten minutes later, this faculty member asked a brilliant question about the paper’s implications for debates over federalism in the early republic.

I remember that seminar first, because I was so tickled by the normalcy of that Google search and the substance of the question. Second, I was struck that the questioner asked a question outside of her own field. The questioner sought to meet the author within the terms of the paper and used the available tools to do that. What struck me most was that, instead of asking a question that had to do with her own work, this scholar took a little extra time to make sure she understood a term—however superficially—before asking her question. Surrounded by so many smart people, it is easy to feel out of my depth. But this example has stuck with me as a reminder that I don’t need to know everything to contribute to a conversation.

Ask questions with purpose.

Nearly as soon as I reached graduate school, I witnessed firsthand the infamous comment-not-question. Other hits of the genre include the “what does this have to do with me” question and the “what if your work was about something else” question. In my attempts to observe and replicate the habits of the most generative question-askers, I have noticed that contrary to the class of questions described above, they ask questions with purpose—and sometimes do not ask questions at all. In student workshops, the most helpful comments and questions almost always came with suggestions for improving the paper at hand. In public lectures, seminars, or at conferences, the purpose changed; still, in each setting, the best questions were firmly about the work under discussion, rather than about what it wasn’t.

Be open.

Though advised not to take feedback personally, I have often found that a bit more easily said than done. Pouring so much time and effort into work in graduate school, I could begin to lose sight of the line between myself and my project. Critique had the potential to make me miserable. I learned to be open by watching how others skillfully took useful suggestions and let less useful critique fall on the cutting-room floor. My closest friends made this easier. Often the first to read early drafts, they delivered their feedback kindly, but honestly. Not all feedback is well meant, but believing it is can make it much easier to adopt.

Finally, share freely.

Sometime in my first month of graduate school, the coordinators of one of Princeton’s graduate-student-run workshops kindly invited me to comment on a colleague’s paper. They had correctly identified the conversance between my stated interests and the paper’s topic on a newspaperman in early nineteenth-century Baltimore. Their invitation was meant to offer a gentle introduction to the department’s vibrant and collegial intellectual community. By all accounts this was an excellent opportunity! The prospect terrified me.

Obviously, I accepted. Over the following week, two different faculty members gave me a blueprint for how to comment on a paper: First, thank the author, thank the attendees, thank the organizers. Offer a summary before moving into critiques and suggestions. Then, conclude with a few substantive questions.

This blueprint eventually became second nature. I shared it with my junior colleagues and developed blueprints of my own for moderating workshops, organizing panels, and writing grants. Some of these blueprints were adaptations of advice that generous mentors and colleagues shared with me. Some blueprints were transcripts of intellectual citizenship I hoped to emulate. My point here is not about the blueprint, but about that blueprint’s life, passed from hand to hand, shaped usefully by each sharer. Sharing tools demystifies the critical rituals, routines, and attendant responsibilities of the intellectual community. This makes it easier for a broader swath of people to contribute to that community and make it better.

Scholarship is produced in a community, not a vacuum. Building relationships is indispensable to the work we do, not tangential.  Besides making the work that much more pleasant, I believe the community and my participation in it have made my work much better.