Thursday, February 11, 2010

Explaination

I am fairly aware that my post yesterday sounded a bit snotty/hooray for me. I think I am just dealing with my occasional sadness/frustration with graduate school life and the sad passing of a former graduate school friend.

I didn't know her well, but I was friends with her boyfriend and she was incredibly spirited and lively. She also was sick (Crohen's) and spent a lot of frustrating time in the hospital with that.

But in addition, she was SO stressed with graduate school. She kept a blog that, in retrospect, spent a lot of time discussing her lack of sleep, anxiety with exams and papers, and general hard time with life. Graduate school is hard. You are constantly told you are not doing enough/good enough/hard working enough.

We have to find the joy in it. And remind ourselves constantly. Sorry if it comes off sounding self-serving.

Here is her obituary from a local paper.

3 comments:

Lesley said...

not snotty at all :) I love hearing all the good things, makes me focus on the positive

MrsEm said...

Rob had a good perspective on it recently. That there just are these set emotions in our life all the time. Stress and anxiety are as much a constant as love and happiness. They're always there, appearing in different ways. Stressing about stress and anxiety just makes it worse.

bioEgirl said...

As a fellow grad student, delurking to say this: Grad school is hard enough as is, no need to apologize for when things are going well!