From Psychology to Sports Management: Julia Stulock’s Grad School Story

Graduate school can be an overwhelming journey, filled with big decisions, self-doubt, and transformation. In the latest episode of the "Victors in Grad School" podcast, Dr. Christopher Lewis welcomes Julia Stulock, Director of Recreational Services at the University of Michigan-Flint, to share her unique path from psychology undergraduate to sports management graduate student.

If you’re considering grad school, currently navigating your studies, or simply looking for inspiration, Julia’s story is a must-hear. She opens up about how her undergraduate experience prepared her well—often in surprising ways—for the academic rigor ahead. As a commuter student at UM-Dearborn, Julia always thought she’d go into research or become a professor, but her campus involvement revealed an entirely new career path in collegiate recreation. This episode underscores the value of staying open to new opportunities and following where your interests lead.

One of the central themes is the importance of choosing the right graduate program. Julia encourages prospective students to consider not just the academic aspects, but also location, assistantship opportunities, and overall fit. Her experience at the University of Connecticut was shaped not only by a robust sports management curriculum but by a graduate assistantship that paid for her school and provided a stipend—a key piece of advice for future applicants.

Listeners will also appreciate Julia’s candid discussion about the challenges of transitioning to graduate study: balancing school and work, adjusting to new expectations, and handling imposter syndrome. She highlights how building connections—through clubs, professional organizations, and classmate relationships—is essential for both emotional support and professional development. Her story is a reminder that community matters, and finding your people can make all the difference during tough times.

Julia’s advice is both practical and heartfelt: don't be afraid to try something new, take calculated risks, and seek out opportunities, even if they seem outside your comfort zone. Graduate school, she says, is “where I found my passion,” and recommends reaching beyond the classroom to maximize your growth.

Tune in to this episode to hear Julia’s reflections on how graduate school changed her approach to problem-solving and time management, and learn what she wishes someone had told her before she started. For anyone at any stage of their academic journey, Julia’s story is a powerful reminder that success often comes from embracing change, building connections, and following your passion.

---

Ready for more inspiring stories and essential advice about thriving in graduate school? Listen to the full episode now!

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Victors in Grad School, where we have conversations with students, alumni, and experts about what it takes to find success in graduate school.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:00:11]:
Welcome back to Victors in Grad School. I'm your host, Dr. Christopher Lewis, Director of Graduate Programs at the University of Michigan, Flint. Really excited to have you back again this week. And as always, every week, I love being able to be on this journey with you because it is a journey not no matter where you are in this continuum of looking at graduate school, maybe you're at the very beginning and just starting to think about, should I do this? Maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't, or maybe you've applied, waiting on that applicant that, that decision from your application, or maybe you just got accepted, or maybe you're in graduate school. No matter where you are, you are on a true journey. And this journey can go in many different directions. But this podcast is here to give you some tools for your toolbox to help you to be able to figure things out ahead of time, to give you some tools for the toolbox to help you figure out how to find success sooner.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:03]:
Because that's what we all want. We all want to be successful in this academic journey that you're on. And whether it be from me, from a person in charge of graduate programs, I want all of my graduate students to be successful in this journey that they're pursuing. But personally, you do, too. And that's why every week, I love being able to bring you different people with different experiences that can share some of their own experiences in going through graduate school that can help you along the way. Today we got another great guest with us. Julia Stulock is with us. And Julia is the Director of Recreational Services at the University of Michigan, Flint, and she did her undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Dearborn and then went on from there.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:01:46]:
So I'm really excited to be able to talk to her about her own experiences and to have her share that with you. Julia, thanks so much for being here today.

Julia Stulock [00:01:53]:
Yeah, really happy to be here and talk through my grad experience. Even though it was a little ways ago, it would be fun to walk down memory lane.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:02:00]:
I'm really excited to be able to talk to you. And I know, as I mentioned, that you did your undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and you got a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology there. And at some point, at some point during that undergraduate experience, you made a decision to continue on to get a graduate degree. Bring me back to that point and talk to me about what was going through your head. That made you decide that grad school was the next step?

Julia Stulock [00:02:27]:
I think for me, because as you mentioned psychology major, I actually got my minor in stats. I always thought I was going to go to grad school. Whether it was because I wanted to become a professor or do research was the initial plan. I knew I'd have to get a degree beyond my bachelor's to do that. However, through my involvement on campus, I was involved in a club sport. By about my junior year, I started to realize through talking with other club sport leaders at other institutions, I was like, oh, there is a whole career path here in collegiate recreation that Dearborn doesn't have like a full recreation department. It's part of athletics. So I didn't realize, like, oh, this is like a whole separate department on some campuses.

Julia Stulock [00:03:09]:
So it was about halfway through my junior year that I realized I do still want to go to grad school, but I'm going to go for sports management instead of psychology like I originally planned. Because I saw this as an opportunity to keep doing something I love, but I need to get a degree in it to make that connection happen for my path.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:03:29]:
So you decided on moving in a different path from psychology and moving a little bit of a different direction. So as you were making that decision for yourself, there are plenty of different programs that are out there in the area that you chose to study. And I'm sure that you went through your own process of exploring different programs, looking out there to determine what was the best fit for you. So talk to me about that process for yourself. I know that you ultimately decided to go to the University of Connecticut for their Master of Arts in Sports management. So talk to me about the process you went through to be able to identify the programs that you were considering and then what made you ultimately decide that the University of Connecticut was the right fit for you?

Julia Stulock [00:04:15]:
So I grew up in Michigan. I was a commuter student to Dearborn. A big part, I will admit for my search was I wanted to experience a different place. So I purposely looked only at out of state schools. I did my research online by looking through different rating website to see who had the best sports management degrees out there. There's also recreation management, which isn't as common as sports management. I didn't even know for sure that I wanted to work in collegiate recreation. Honestly, at that point I just knew I wanted to work in sports.

Julia Stulock [00:04:48]:
So I thought maybe that would look like an athletic department and CIA sports or possibly recreation. So I just was like, sports Management Recreation looked at the best programs out there. Also visited campuses. I was lucky enough to have friends scattered throughout the country that I could kind of go visit and stay with them and then go visit campus. So I looked anywhere from West Virginia University to University of Texas to a small school in Massachusetts, and I narrowed it down to, like, about my top six or seven to apply to. And as I was doing that, I also learned that there are these things called graduate assistantships or teaching assistantships at some schools. And that's ultimately what helped me decide on the University of Connecticut. I was accepted to a couple other programs, but I was offered a graduate assistantship in club sports at the University of Connecticut.

Julia Stulock [00:05:38]:
And they helped pay for my school and also gave me a stipend. That sealed the deal. There was another school I was considering. I'm like, oh, wait, you're going to pay me. I will absolutely go there. And they also had a great program to join for their sports management.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:05:52]:
For every student, as they're transitioning from an undergraduate degree into a graduate degree, there is a definite transition that happens. There's a transition in the way that you're taught, the way that you're. The expectations that faculty have of you. And every person has to go through their own journey to be able to understand what that means for them and how to manage that situation for themselves. So as you were transitioning into graduate school, what did you have to do to set yourself up for success? And as you were going through that graduate school experience, what did you have to do to maintain that success throughout graduate school?

Julia Stulock [00:06:32]:
I think, thankfully, my undergraduate experience, I feel like, really prepared me very well for grad school. That, in fact, I had the same textbook for one of my statistics classes that I used in undergrad, and it was the same one. I'm like, I'm repeating a class here. Hold on. So I was really thankful for that, that Dearborn prepared me really well. And I think some of those changes you see going into grad school, right, is like you have these closer relationships with faculty who have smaller class sizes. And again, because Dearborn, just like Flint, has some of those smaller class sizes, I was already used to talking to faculty, not TAs, full professors. And I wasn't afraid of those conversations.

Julia Stulock [00:07:11]:
So I think that really set me up for success, that I didn't feel weird. Like, I had classes with 12 people. Our class size at UConn, my sports law class was small. We had a lot of serious, like, you know, detailed discussions. You couldn't not participate in those. So I think not being afraid to talk to your faculty is a big key to success. From my experience, just doing well in your undergrad classes, paying attention, because you never know when it might overlap or just it's building on top of something in grad school that it might feel like, well, why do I need this? I'm going into sports management. Statistics was required.

Julia Stulock [00:07:49]:
There were two required classes in grad school. I still had to take it. So not just assuming you won't need it again was really important. And I think one of the bigger challenges for me transitioning to grad school was that work school balance. Because of my graduate assistantship, I was working a lot of hours there, and that proved to be challenging in terms of making sure I was setting aside enough time, getting enough sleep. I was also not commuting any longer. So, like, being away from home and family, and it was more just about building those bonds so that you would have the support system. So, like, friends joining a club on campus so that I would not just be on my own and I had those support systems in place far away from home was really important because I can actually remember thinking at the end of my first semester, I would not have stayed at UConn unless I had joined the running club there, because that's how I made my friends.

Julia Stulock [00:08:43]:
That's how I felt like I belonged somewhere. That was really important because I think I would have left.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:08:48]:
You know, I hear from a lot of graduate students that beyond the. Especially if they go away from home, beyond the separation anxiety and some of the other anxieties that they run into, there's this feeling of, am I meant to be here? Am I good enough? Can I live up to the expectations? Which comes down to what people call the imposter syndrome. And I guess as you think back to your own experience, how did that imposter syndrome or self doubt impact you and how did you handle it?

Julia Stulock [00:09:15]:
Yes, there were times, like I mentioned, that first semester was just hard, learning all these new things. I was in student affairs for the first time as well, because I had been an intern in the athletic department at Dearborn, which at the time, I didn't even know anything about student affairs. I don't know if we had a division. I had no idea what I was doing. There was a lot of learning about student development that, like, yeah, it made me go, like, what did I sign up for? Am I supposed to be here? Is this supposed to be this hard? And trying to think of, like, how did I overcome that? I think it was more just like talking with my classmates because a lot of us had graduate assistantships across campus. And it was reassuring to hear that other people had those same thoughts, that it wasn't just me. Well, and everyone can't not belong here, right? There was that common thread of, wow, we feel like this is a lot. And also just hearing sometimes stories of like, wow, I thought I had a hard day, but theirs was harder.

Julia Stulock [00:10:11]:
Just commiserating with each other was really helpful. And then overall, just being able to reflect on, like, this is just a part of growth. It is difficult and accepting that that comes with it. And again, those connection pieces of just finding people you connect with, where I felt like I really found my group towards the end of my first year. And that made the second year feel like I belong because I, I just had those connections built in where when you're the new kid, it's really hard to feel connected because you, you. It takes time to build those connections.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:10:40]:
One thing that comes to mind, you know, earlier you talked about when you were looking at different programs, you looked at sports management, you looked at recreation management. You're currently in more of a recreational services, recreation management type of role at the University of Michigan, Flint. If you look back and I know your graduate degree was a, a number of years back, as you mentioned at the beginning, but if you had to do it, would you choose the same program or would you choose a different path? Why or why not?

Julia Stulock [00:11:07]:
I would do it all over again. For me, at the time when I was trying to decide between the two paths, it was more out of. I just didn't know enough about either one to decide for sure. And I knew I have two small kids. I knew that I wanted to have a family one day, or at least I hoped I would. And I saw the lack of work life balance, at least from my counterparts and my classmates in the athletic world. The amount of late nights and weekends and the hours like, I mean, not that I had a cakewalk, but man, theirs just seemed a lot more difficult. And I saw that, that just seemed to be a common thread across athletic departments and that didn't fit with what I was looking for.

Julia Stulock [00:11:49]:
I still have friends to this day that work in that field and they love it. And you've probably asked them, they wouldn't do anything different either. But for me, I knew I was looking for something that had more of that be balance. That wouldn't mean I was working every night and every weekend. So I would absolutely do it again. I would go to UConn again as well, because I will say I was challenged, but I grew a lot. I learned a lot. It is where, as I mentioned, I was introduced to student affairs and it is where I realized I really had this passion for collegiate recreation and that it could be something for everyone and not just the best of the best of athletes among us.

Julia Stulock [00:12:28]:
That it can be for everyone the best of the best and those just looking to have fun or to start a fitness journey. I was lucky enough to be a part of founding a governing body for a club sport which really opened my eyes to that too of just like the impact it can make on student experience and lifelong things too, like finding a partner or lifelong friends. And that's why it still keeps me here, is that I found that passion so I would not change a thing at all. And glad for the experience I had.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:12:59]:
I know you mentioned earlier the importance of that running club as well as some finding that group for yourself. And sometimes students kind of buckle down and they think, especially with being more and more programs being remote from a campus, sometimes it's not always that easy to make those connections. I guess as you think back to the experience that you had and you were in a program that was in person and on a campus, talk to me about that connection and building those connections and the importance of being engaged beyond the classroom and what that did for you as a student.

Julia Stulock [00:13:34]:
Me being engaged outside the classroom is what helped me find my passion and my career path. But when thinking specifically about grad school. Right. I mentioned that running club because that was my in person connection. However, it helped me expand outside of our campus because this governing body that I mentioned is called nerca, it's National Intercollegiate Running Club Association. At the time I was the membership coordinator. So I got to talk with club leaders from across across the country about their running clubs and make friends and connections that way and learn about club sports that way. About how all the different ways that their departments run and how you know what type of support they had or didn't have.

Julia Stulock [00:14:15]:
And that was equally as important to my development and growth as what I was getting on campus. Because again, I still have those friendships to this day, decades later that are so meaningful in terms of again the impact we're making or just having a friend that you could call up somewhere and say like what do you think about this? Or what are you seeing? Because maybe they work in my field. So those. I think it's more just about finding like you mentioned that connection outside of the classroom. Whether it's a student org on campus, maybe it's volunteering with a group somewhere in your interest in your field, maybe it's reaching out to a professional to pick their brain and you end up finding a great mentor. You have to reach beyond that classroom because I don't know, for me personally, it's just where I felt like I got the most growth. Because as much as you can try to make a project in a class mirror the real world, it's never going to quite get it right fully if it's just a short couple week project. But that's where I got the most meaningful lessons and connections, was through finding those groups and connections outside of the class.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:15:21]:
You know, as you think about your graduate school experience and what you're doing today, how did graduate school change the way that you think work or approach problems?

Julia Stulock [00:15:32]:
I think probably more just on the proactive side because I mentioned that the time management piece I had to learn between balancing school and work was just more than I had experienced before. So it was more this forward thinking and planning and whether it's writing out your assignments in your planner or planning out what you have going on at work so you can be ahead of it. For me, I am a planner. I like to think ahead on things. I want agenda bullet points in advance. And that's not just because I'm trying to get ahead of the curve. It's so that I can have time to problem solve. Because problem solving on the fly might not result in the best end result than if you can go, oh, I have a problem, but I have two weeks to solve it instead of two hours.

Julia Stulock [00:16:17]:
So, yeah, it's more that just. I think it's that pre planning and thinking, okay, what do I have coming up? Is there anything I can do now to help myself so that I don't get myself in a pickle?

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:16:28]:
And as you think back to grad school and you think back to the journey that you went on throughout your time there, what's something that you wish that someone had told you before you started grad school?

Julia Stulock [00:16:39]:
I really wish someone had explained to me what graduate assistantships were. I really feel like I stumbled into what I got and I was very lucky. Such a good experience. But golly, like what? Oh, I just wish I had understood. I thought they just paid for school. I didn't understand. It came with a stipend until I literally got my offer letter in the mail. I went, oh, they pay me to.

Julia Stulock [00:17:02]:
I had no idea. And I think that would have changed. I don't even think I know it would have changed how I approached my search because I realized that there were some programs that there's one in particular, I'll leave them unnamed. I didn't realize that basically you need to have a GA position in order to get into their program, but I didn't know they existed. And they start those search processes so early. Like it could have been like they open applications in November, December. I had no idea. And it would have really helped me because I could have gotten in my.

Julia Stulock [00:17:31]:
I thought it was you applied for school and then you applied for the graduate assistantships or the teaching assistantships. So just someone that could have helped explain that that is there and can help potentially pay for grad school and maybe inform where you go if you're willing to go where the money is and you have open doors where you're willing to go, that would have been immensely helpful.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:17:52]:
Finally, as you think back to that entire experience and you think about other people that are considering going to graduate school for themselves, what are some tips that you might offer others beyond what you just said about the graduate assistantship that might help students find success sooner?

Julia Stulock [00:18:08]:
Don't be afraid to try something new. I know it sounds cliche, but truly, whether you're going to grad school full time or you're working and going to grad school, you might not have another opportunity to take a risk that doesn't have really far reaching implications if it doesn't work out. So like waiting few years after you have your master's and going like, I really, oh, I really wish I'd try that. I'd have to leave my job to do that. Don't be afraid to take that risk in grad school if you're not sure. Like I was talking about like athletics, recreation, what do I want to do? Right? I started talking to people and realized, oh, maybe that's not what I want to do. Or maybe you apply for an internship to get more information experience in somewhere or to just shadow someone. Don't have to win an internship, just shadow someone.

Julia Stulock [00:18:58]:
If you're not sure, take that risk and reaching out or trying something new because maybe you'll find out something isn't for you or maybe you'll find that new passion. You're like, this helps me decide where I want to go. Because the more committed you can be to a goal, I think the sooner you can find success because when you have that full commitment, interest and passion, you can find that trifecta. You'll find success because work will feel less like work and more like fun, hopefully.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:26]:
Well, Julie, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your journey today. Thank you for sharing all that you learned in your own experience, and I truly wish you all the best.

Julia Stulock [00:19:34]:
Thank you so much. It was my pleasure.

Dr. Christopher Lewis [00:19:36]:
The University of Michigan Flint has a full array of master's and doctorate programs if you are interested in continuing your education. Whether you're looking for in person or online learning opportunity, the University of Michigan Flint has programs that will meet your needs. For more information on any of our graduate programs, visit umflint.edu graduateprograms to find out more. Thanks again for spending time with me as you prepare to be a victor in grad school. I look forward to speaking with you again soon as we embark together on your graduate school journey. If you have any questions or want to reach out, email me at flintgrad office at umflint. Eduardo.