MussoLOLen is Always Right! |

A couple of days ago I had it all figured out. I realized that the secret to staying sane to grad school is to simply not care.

By “not care” I don’t mean “start being irresponsible.” I will still put my best efforts in whatever I do, but I will not care about the results – results being what other people might think of my work. I will not care about being the best in class. I will not care that I’m probably far from being the best in class because my classmates have more knowledge and experience than I do. I will not care that for me, it’s the academe or die. (The world won’t end if I don’t make it, but I really don’t see any sort of future for myself if I have to work in an office day in day out.) I will read what I can and study as much as I can and not care that in spite of the hours I put in reading all these things, there will still be a lot that I won’t understand.

I had that all figured out. The fire was back, and for once I sat in front of my computer looking forward to doing my paper instead of dreading it.

That all came crumbling down two nights ago when I spoke to a friend about my ideas for a paper and he reacted to it a little too critically. I suppose it wouldn’t be entirely fair to blame him for what happened to me after. He was just trying to help the only way he knows how, but I keep getting this sense of “What? I can’t believe you don’t know this yet” every time I speak to him about what I want to do. I realize that this sort of reaction affects me so much because those are the exact same things I tell myself; to have it echoed implicitly or explicitly by another person just confirms all the negative ways in which I see myself and my abilities. I ended up crying myself to sleep that night, and I woke up with an awful sense of frustration and hopelessness that stayed with me the entire day. Getting out of bed that afternoon (I slept through the morning) was an epic feat.

I don’t think it’s wrong that I put a lot of pressure on myself, but I have a feeling that the pressure is a little misdirected. Okay fine, a lot misdirected. Ale and Kristel both told me (on seperate occassions) that I focus too much on my shortcomings instead of what needs to get done. Kristel says I was very rigid on her and myself when it came to schoolwork – a funny observation, considering that I don’t remember a whole lot of studying going on when I was in college. It wasn’t uncommon for study sessions

to degenerate into drinking sessions within the hour

with a lot of gratuitous boob-grabbing in between.

(I kid you not when I say I didn’t learn jack shit about academic things in college. So now you probably understand why I’m constantly asking myself what the hell I’m doing in grad school.)

Anyway, so Kristel was telling me there’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to get things done perfectly. My problem is that instead of just getting things done, my mind goes overdrive on the “perfectly” part and the insecurities that come along with it. Whenever I do anything academic, I work work work for a while and out of nowhere I freeze, panic, and think:

“Gah, I can’t do this.”
“Oh god, why am I not as smart as my classmates?”
“Maybe I’m better off being an office monkey.”
And the penultimate, “What am I doing with my life?”

So, now. The Rules To Staying Sane In Grad School:

1.) I will not care (see first paragraph).
2.) I will take things as slowly as time will allow me and do things one step at a time.
3.) I will lighten up on myself, ease up on the loft expectations, and focus on what I DID do for the day instead of freaking out over what I wasn’t able to do.

(Rules two and three sound like appendages to rule one but meh, who cares.)

To be perfectly honest, I still feel mightily discouraged – and at this point, I don’t think anything anyone can say to me will help. Putting all this down into writing is my attempt at pulling myself together, as if by seeing this on paper the rules will automatically apply and I will handle this all like a healthy human being. But I’m just as lost as I was two nights ago (minus the crying, at least). That overwhelming sense of dread is still sitting on my chest. The question “What am I REALLY doing?” still matters and still has no real answer.

Perhaps I’ll give myself another day off and catch up on my pop culture. Which is really just a better way of saying, “I will avoid serious thinking and anything academic by seeing my friends, zoning out to movies, reading fun books, and getting my ass seriously kicked in Scrabulous.”