Co-working Sessions for Grad Students

I am an alum of the University of Michigan interested in offering co-working sessions for grad students. When my partner and I were working on our doctoral dissertations, we found co-working with a group of students invaluable in helping us get our dissertations written. I think we happened to have gotten lucky to have hit upon working in this way, and I'd like to make getting to benefit from this accessible to more students.

Things are so much more unstructured for grad students than for undergrads. I'd like to offer some structure that students could benefit from, in terms of times and places where co-working can happen and in terms of how to go about these sessions.

These sessions will have work periods where each student works on their own separate tasks interspersed with Teddy Bear Talk Support periods where students each take a turn getting to talk out loud with their listening partner. The listening partner only talks if requested by the talker. When the listening partner does talk, the idea is that they are just looking to jiggle things a bit for the talker.