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| Not everything about grad school will be as sunny or pretty as this Cambridge morning, but there's no reason it can't be as inspirational. |
I write this post from the comforts of home during my first winter break from grad school, and as I sit here and look back on my first semester, I see nearly four months of the most intense coursework, stress, and insecurity I’ve ever known.
I went into grad school knowing I came in with fairly common yet nevertheless still worrying “disadvantages”: I’d been out of school for a couple of years, and did not have as strong a mathematical background as many of my peers. And unfortunately, I do think those “disadvantages” materialized and reared their ugly heads to some extent in my experience of this first semester.
So indeed I won’t lie and say that the first semester was ever easy or particularly pleasant; there were very few weeks or even days where I felt moderately on top of all my responsibilities, and the days where I felt like I could allow myself even a brief moment of relaxation without the guilt that I was sacrificing on precious productivity or schoolwork time were few and far in between. Most importantly, I look ahead to the second semester and I know that very little will be different. Yes, I come in with the knowledge that I am indeed capable of surviving (if not thriving) a semester of graduate school, with the veil surrounding the experience demystified. I’ll come in equipped with slightly more confidence that it’s not entirely impossible, and that I’m not the only one doubting my ability to make it through the process (to the extent there is strength in knowing you do not suffer alone).
So I wish to reflect somewhat as I prepare to go back in the next few weeks, partly from the desire to leave behind a trace of these moments I can hopefully look back on in the future as a reminder to myself of what I was feeling during similarly stressful times (hindsight bias always making the experience of one’s past always seem so easy, contributing to our perpetual feeling that we always struggle more in the present than we ever did before), and partly as a form of advice to anyone who may stumble upon these few words as they consider or experience grad school for the first time themselves.
I realize as I write this that grad school affords one very few opportunities to check in with oneself, to introspect and reflect on what one is experiencing and how one is feeling. To some extent, the whirlwind of action, classes, and responsibilities is a good thing: it keeps you moving, distracted, and with some notion of a goal to constantly keep working towards. This is of course exhausting, so I take the opportunity now to reflect mostly on how surprising I found it that whatever I was feeling in terms of insecurities, doubts, or anxieties was very much a common and shared symptom.
It’s a common part of human nature that to our eyes, everyone always seems to be doing so much better, to be finding it all so much easier. And that is still very much the case during grad school; it seems there’s always one person or multiple people able to balance working with professors, attending seminars, going to class, finishing problem sets, and also getting a social life in. And while there may be one or two people who are able to do so, I found that more likely than not, everybody else in the program was struggling through very similar emotions that, quite often, were left unsaid. It was this strange environment, where I don’t feel like anyone actually thought anybody else was doing particularly well, or where there was any shame whatsoever in sharing a particular difficulty or mental obstacle, but where nevertheless there was a very transparent veil of stress that could simply not be broken. Part of it was due, I feel, to what I’ve already mentioned: we have very little time to reflect, or even to share a brief moment of venting with any of our peers. Another non-trivial part of it was that, even though I never felt judged or looked down on (in my cohort at least, quite the contrary) there’s always the pressure to appear more competent, more prepared and more on top of things than one really is (or at least, feels).
So my first takeaway after a long preamble then would be that it’s incredibly important to verbalize and share. I found myself seeking some signal, some indication that at least someone else was feeling something at least close enough to the level of exhaustion, stress, and insecurity I was feeling. While technically in an ideal world one never wishes one’s peers to also be suffering, it’s absolutely true that there is strength in numbers, in commiseration and in a public support system. Otherwise, grad school can be an isolating place. So please, share, talk, even laugh about stress and insecurity, if that’s an effective way of addressing the issue.
While there’s something clearly undesirable and unattractive about waving off the clear mental health concerns that grad school introduces with “oh, everybody feels that way”, it’s an important first step that everybody realizes how alone they are not in whatever they are feeling.
My second takeaway would then be that, because everyone at some point or another (or really, at almost all points) feels a similar way, one should never fall into the trap of comparing oneself to others. In grad school, you are your own measuring stick, your own competition, and your own hero. While this may seem to some extent a contradiction of what I’ve already mentioned re: the importance of sharing in the common experiences and emotions, what I will say is that graduate school is also an important step in constructing your own academic or professional brand, in carving out one’s own interests or joining and contributing in the work of many others who have shared them already. As such, to a large extent, you are the master of your own destiny and (pardon the cliches), captain of your own ship. With that comes the ability to know for yourself your limits, to recognize when you need a break, and most importantly not let those moments make you feel guilty or less than others. Contrary to what your instincts, peers, or advisors may sometimes tell you implicitly or explicitly, sleep, relaxation, and leisure are not unproductive time. They are necessary moments of and means to rest, memory consolidation, and de-stressing that your brain will very much need throughout the long process. No one else can give those moments to you or make space for them. You must decide for yourself when and how often you feel you can take them, and never think that because no one else seems to be doing it, that you should not give yourself a moment’s pause or break.
During grad school, there is a constant pressure to do everything. You’ll never feel like you’re doing enough, or doing the right amount of anything. You’ll feel lazy or irresponsible for not going to enough (or, for many of us) any seminars, for not attending some of the TF’s office hours, for not reading dozens of papers, or letting your workout regimen go.
I myself struggled with never feeling satisfied with the amount of effort or time I could dedicate to anything. I’ve never considered myself a person that is particularly naturally brilliant. While I look around me and see people that can understand and grasp complicated theories or new pieces of information on a whim and on the spot, I’ve always considered myself a bit of a slow-burner. I need to ruminate, to absorb things constantly and repeatedly to truly internalize them. Unfortunately, grad school does not lend itself to any slow rumination of anything. Before she’s taken a breath, the professor has moved on to the next slide, or the lectures have moved on to a new topic, and I found it often very impossible to engage in the kind of mental processing and type of learning that I find most compatible and effective for myself. I feel that if I am able to succeed, it has been so far and still is through a Spartan level of discipline and dedication, through sinking many hours pondering on a subject until I have fully engaged with it, and unfortunately grad school quickly and effectively eliminates all of the stamina required to engage in that kind of learning, and as I’ve mentioned, solely through the very breadth, depth, and speed of it all, is not conducive to that particular style of studying.
My only response to that (if anyone reading this has felt the same way and found a particular mechanism to deal with this issue, please let me know!) would be to have faith and flexibility. Grad school is an entirely different animal to any kind of academic level most people have experienced before; it may very well be true that everyone feels like their particular style of learning and succeeding has been compromised in the difficult and novel process that is graduate-level education. So what I can say is to allow your brain to adjust, and to trust that you have gotten to this point in life so far very much because you have been able to adjust and adapt in the past many times already. I’m no evolutionary biologist, but survival is as much about the ability to adapt and change as it is about natural ability, and it is often sticking with and relying on the latter that can lead to extinction in the face of the unknown and the rapidly changing landscape.
Lastly, one final observation I commonly had through the experience was how stunningly little was required of me in terms of materials. After all, it was almost always just me and a pen or pencil. Ultimately, your brain is your instrument in grad school. Sure, you’ll eventually work with some statistical software or package, for which you may have some privileged access or fancy computer or server, and having the minds of others to bounce ideas off of and discuss difficult problem set questions with (is there such a thing as an easy problem set question?) is of the essence, but ultimately what’s working 24/7 for you is your mind. It needs rest, and most importantly, to believe in itself (pardon again the Chicken-Soup-for-the-Soul level of advice here). Grad school is an exercise in self-trust, in self-confidence; to survive you’ll need to build a support system and go for it.
Never before in my life have I felt so close to understanding what blind faith is. It may sound heretical to the religious among us or narcissistic and arrogant to many others (I hope that the many previous paragraphs in this post have convinced otherwise those among you that may feel I am either of the latter two), but I have learned nothing more forcefully in the last four months than to entirely and wholeheartedly believe and trust in myself, even when all reason would have me believe otherwise.
I still have very much to experience and learn (I’ve only been through this process for a handful of months), and the advice I may have could very well be very different in six, twelve, or twenty-four months’ time, but for now, I tell myself and anyone else who may be reading this: during graduate school, don't let your problem sets, grades, others' performance or self-imposed, arbitrary measures of progress discourage you; it's all a learning process, take it all in and trust that in the background your brain is processing and making connections. Absorb everything and let inspiration surprise you when it comes, on its own time. There will be many downs, but trust the process and carry on.
I am reminded now of one of my favorite quotes from my favorite book (I owe my Columbia education many thanks for introducing me to it), To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. She writes:
“Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?--startling, unexpected, unknown?”
Like many other things in life both big and small, graduate school has no safety, no guide, and no shelter. It is all leaping from that pinnacle of a tower into the unexpected. What I have most learned so far in these four months is to have the confidence to take that leap. With hope, trust, and compassion in and for ourselves, we will safely land wherever our skills and ideas can most widely and profoundly impact the world, sometimes in surprising ways.
At worst, let the support system of your family, friends, peers, acquaintances, or any combination of the above, be there at the bottom to catch you if all else fails.
