How to get into a science-based Master's degree in Canada

So I know the title is really blunt, but before I begin, here's a disclaimer. I got into graduate school. My weird, unofficial last-minute year off ended and I am now a grad student, and I'm glad for that. I needed this last year, but I'm making slow progress now into the next challenge of my life. But god, was it HARD to navigate this process! I can't tell you how many times I googled for advice only to find the following three things:

1) advice for people pursing Ph.Ds (word to the wise- don't just google "grad school" because it almost NEVER means Master's degree)

2) advice for Americans (I'm Canadian, we don't have to write a GRE, and we also have a very different experience applying to undergrad)

3) advice for people in non-science disciplines (glad it's out there, but boy was it frustrating when I started reading a seemingly good article only to find it really didn't apply to my discipline)

So here is what this is going to be about: my experience applying for a science-based Master's degree (graduate or grad school degree) in Canada. I'm peppering this with keywords to make it easier to find. To be clear, this is based on my own experience- I'm not an admissions expert. But I know in my days of frantic googling, this is the kind of stuff that really would have helped me.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this article for someone who's a lot like past me, and past me was really fucking depressed (undiagnosed, fwiw) and stressed about the future. If you're feeling ok, I hope the promises that you will be ok later are still comforting. If you're not feeling ok, I hope you know those promises are genuine. I wrote this for myself, now that I'm able to be kind to myself again. I hope you can learn to be kind to yourself again too.

General advice that would have been handy at any point, really:

1. YOUR GPA MATTERS. I hate this fact. I really do. It's unfair, and a little bit stupid. I was denied opportunities because my GPA just wasn't high enough- all my actual research experience be damned. At the end of the day, there is not a lot of money in research in Canada right now and you need to be able to get funding for yourself. A lot of that funding is, unfortunately, pretty much purely GPA based. Sure, there's some stuff about your history, your supervisor's history, and the proposal you submit, but you gotta keep that GPA up. My GPA sat steady at 3.4 pretty much my entire degree (on a four point scale), and that was not enough. It's worthwhile to put in the extra hours of study to get your GPA at 3.6 or above if you can.
THAT BEING SAID: I still got accepted. I still did summer programs. I just had to hunt a little harder.

2. Extracurriculars matter too. I mentioned them in my letter of intent, and they also kept me sane. They can help you to take all your nerdy science passion and put it towards a good cause. I volunteered with a program where we were paired up and gave science demonstrations to elementary school kids. But I also started my university's only creative writing club and learned to swing dance. I did these things because I wanted to and found them fun, and they helped me be social, make friends, take time away from my studies, give back, etc.
THAT BEING SAID: Don't EVER do an extracurricular just because you think it's a good CV padder. You will probably hate it and not be able to give it your best efforts. A competent president of a knitting club with the esteem of your other executives is better than the lowly just-doing-it-for-the-CV-boost secretary of [School Name]'s Official Branch Of Some Medical NonProfit club. I promise.

3. Advice from real people is always better. If you can get close to profs or researchers, even other grad students, they will always be more helpful than some vague blog post on the internet, even one that tries to be specific, like this. HOWEVER: some of the advice I got ended up being ... well, lowkey kind of bullshit. It was way over the top and overwhelmed me and brought me to a breaking point with keeping my depression and suicidal thoughts a secret. That's obviously a worst case scenario- and I did get other GREAT advice. Just don't expect it to all be golden. It's going to be a mixed fucking bag.

If you're still in high school thinking about this already:

Damn, girl! That's intense! You remind me of me, and there are some things you can do here. You can try to get into a good undergrad program that you're interested in, but you already knew that. University selection for undergrad isn't something I'm going to touch on here, though, so...

I have two pieces of advice for someone at this stage.

1) Try to get some actual research experience- there are programs that exist to get high school kids in university labs! I ended up using a connection to get a volunteer position in a lab for the summer after my grade 11 year*. That summer, I was in the lab three days a week for four hours a day, and I loved it (this also would have enabled me to get a part-time job if I had needed one). This wasn't a one-off, either, because other profs I worked for/with talked about high school students in their labs. If you are really interested in lab work, and have strong grades, it's worth at least trying to email a professor if you live in a city with a university (or even a college).
THAT BEING SAID: it's OK if you can't make this happen! This early in the game, it's fine to just be working a service job for the summer or doing whatever else you do. But if you have the chance to try out research early- take it!

*(Disclaimer: I am all for using connections. That's how I got most of my positions, though I kept them and got good grades because I worked hard. A family friend knew a researcher, she took me on, and kept me because I worked hard. She recommended another one to me, and me to him, and I worked in his lab. The grad student I did my third year project with got me some clout with the professor I did my fourth year project with. I'm going back to grad school with that original researcher, using references from a postdoc in her lab, that fourth year project supervisor, and the guy who she recommended I work with. Use your connections- and always be gracious, courteous, and professional, even with researchers you hate. They can never know you hate them. Of course, I wouldn't recommend using them as references- but more on that later).

2) Be open to the possibility that you'll find out grad school isn't for you after all. You might end up pursuing a professional degree, like medicine, nursing, pharmacy, or teaching. You might decide you don't want to chase that academic dream- but industry requires an M.Sc too, much of the time. You might even decide you don't want to be in science. This is all totally normal and people experience it all the damn time. Don't freak out if you change your mind- or if you don't. You may have just hit the nail right on the head. I also had people tell me a lot that people often change their whole degree, so when I didn't feel the need to, it did freak me out at first. Just remember- there is no right answer. Be honest with yourself, work hard, and you will most likely land on your feet.

If you're in the early years of your degree (for a typical four-year degree plan, years one and two):

This is a good time to get all the stupid prereqs out of the way, but also do some serious thinking about what degree you really want to pursue, especially towards the end of your second year. Sometimes one first or second year course opens up ALL the third/fourth year courses, making that course VERY important! If you're leaning towards a specialty or a more narrow focus, it's worthwhile to talk to an advisor about exploring those options. I'm really glad I did that because it put me on track to get into a whole bunch of cool research in my final two years.

The first two years of my degree were my least favourite, class-wise. Sure, some were cool, but others were tedious and boring and awful and hard (I'm looking at you, organic chemistry) but you just gotta suck it up and do them. But because I got so many out of the way early, my upper years were full of really cool and interesting genetics classes that were super focused, like I wanted. And that made it all worth it.

If you're in the third year of your degree (for a typical four-year degree plan):

At this point, I hope you know what degree you're pursuing or if you're thinking of changing your mind, that you're at least looking into what your options are and how you would go about switching. Which courses transfer over? Are you missing any? What's left to graduate when you want to graduate? This is the time to try to plan things out- maybe you can't plan it all, but you can try. A flexible plan is better than flying by the seat of your pants when it comes to something this expensive and time consuming.

After your second year ends is a good time to start pursuing undergraduate research. You have the basic background from all those awful boring courses to do some basic work. Most students try to work with professors in their labs over the summers. I'm going to be honest here- this pays like crap because there is no money in research. You can expect anywhere from $1300-$1500 per month. To get these, you need to be contacting profs mainly from November-January of the previous year. I know this seems really early, but for the upcoming summer, most funding deadlines are in February, and I really really wish someone had told me that. These are the funding opportunities that require a good GPA, hence my advice above.

If your university offers it, do independent study or research project courses, and do them for longer time periods (at least two semesters). This will give you a little taste of research and help you build connections. I took two of these in my last two years, and I loved them. They gave me a little bite of independence- sort of like training to be a master's student- and allowed flexibility, since I could plan experiments to not fall on crazy midterm weeks. This is also a way to get research lab experience if you seriously can't afford to do more than one summer in a research lab. There's also a chance that if you do a course in the lab and the supervisor likes you, they'll take you on for the summer and/or offer to write you reference letters, which is VERY IMPORTANT AND HELPFUL. Praise be to those who write reference letters.

It's worthwhile to spend some time thinking about what kind of research you want to pursue as a graduate student. What kind of specialty do you like? Is there a research approach you're interested in? What kind of research do you want to be doing? This is also where undergraduate research is useful. If you spend a summer in a lab and absolutely hate it, you're done at the end of the summer. But remember the disclaimer above: don't let them know you hate it!! I can't stress this enough!

If you're in the final year of your degree (for a typical four-year degree plan, year four):

You're almost there! And yes, it is completely and totally normal to be worried and anxious about what is going to happen once you graduate. Everyone is worried about that. I was so worried I fell into a depression that really tainted the entire year (this was never diagnosed, just to be clear). My first piece of advice to you is:

It is okay if you don't know what you are going to do. It is okay if you are totally lost. It is okay if you don't have a plan yet. It is even okay if you aren't in grad school next year. Stay calm. You are going to be okay. I promise. 

Nobody really told me this in any meaningful way during that entire year. I suppose the best way to internalize that message is through experience, but here I am to tell you: I did not get into grad school right after my final year. I was paralyzed with fear of failing. I was overwhelmed with the pressure to "do the right thing." I was extraordinarily hard on myself. It sucked. I don't want anyone else to ever experience that so here I am, living proof that you can fail and it can be okay. That "okay" can even mean getting into grad school.

So, hoping you are okay, and speaking to those keeners who are not depressed/anxious and are ready to go, there is some other advice here.

You should have at least some research experience by this point. If you don't, again, please don't panic. Before your fourth year starts, look for opportunities to get into a research lab for even a short independent study (if your school offers this). If you've kept your GPA up, you have a decent chance at getting a summer lab job. Where there's a will, there's a way. For full disclosure, I went into this process with a large amount of research experience, which felt like my only asset at times, so I'm not the right person to ask for advice about how to get in without that experience. If you are the right person to ask- I beg of you, please write about it and put it on the internet somewhere!

Speaking of summer jobs- I'm sure you remember how they required you to talk to profs from November-January. Grad school is the same. The deadlines for most schools I looked at were in the spring, so a bit later than summer studentship funding, but it's still good to get an early start. This is the time to email researchers about the potential of being a grad student in their lab.

Writing those grad school emails to researchers you've never met:

First things first, you will need a transcript- unofficial is fine- and a CV. This is non-negotiable. Your CV should have your education (I put high school on to include IB stuff, but you can probably leave it off. They know you graduated), including current GPA and expected date of completion of your degree, your research experience, funding history, publications (if you have any), notable classes (those independent studies fit here!), work history, and extracurriculars. This can be longer than a page, it's not like a resume, but keep it as concise as you can.

When you email these people, you need to state specifically why you are interested in their research and what projects you are interested in. Don't get overwhelmed by that! If you read their background and give it some time, you will come up with something. I frequently sent emails thinking oh, god, they're gonna know I'm full of shit... and then I got replies and had conversations with the professors. Some emails did get ignored, yes, but that's not the point. Sometimes finding a way to show your interest is easy- "oh, they're researching X disease! That's similar to my work on Y disease last summer!" Or even just "Oh, they're interested in Y factor! We talked about that in my  Y FCTR 307 class!" If not, researchers sometimes have a list of projects available, so you can say "I'm interested in your work on [the one project that sounded really cool from your web description]" or if they don't, relate this back to your initial interest in their research- "I'm interested in discussing your projects on Y factor/X disease." The best thing to remember about profs is that they are so deep down the rabbit hole of their research that they will talk about it to just about anyone. They love talking about it. It's their whole career, and for some, their whole life. BUTTER THEM UP.

If they don't respond right away, I like to send a follow up after 3-4 days, and another one again 3-4 days later (that's 3-4 business days, folks. Weekends do not count). If they don't respond after that, they aren't interested. Accept the loss and move on. I also found an email scheduling service handy for this, since it let me write emails days in advance and it would send them for me later.

When you go to talk to researchers you've never even met:

When you go in and talk to people, dress professionally. You're an adult now, you should own some professional clothes. Do NOT dress like a student! A nice sweater, some nice shoes, a neat hairdo... it will make you look like you take this whole thing seriously. Sit up straight. Maintain eye contact. CLEAN YOUR GLASSES BEFOREHAND. Bring copies of your CV and transcript. And BE PREPARED TO TALK ABOUT YOURSELF. Have examples of where you took the lead on a project. Know all the research you've worked on, inside and out, like the back of your hand- this might mean looking through old presentations and independent study writeups in advance. Be prepared to discuss your research interests, and ask them about their research! If they offer you the chance to talk to the grad students in their lab, take it. Ask them how they like this person as a supervisor, what kind of supervision style they have, what the climate in the lab is like, etc. Then you can leave, and buy yourself a candy bar from the vending machine to congratulate yourself, and email them a thank you follow-up within the next 24 hours (I'm serious. Do this. It will make you look gracious and professional and serious).

If you can't meet them in person- again, not an expert. Some profs have agreed to skype with me before. In that case, dress your top half professionally at least, make sure there isn't a weed poster or giant bottle of lube/wine/whatever behind you, and tell everyone who might come into the room where you're skyping that YOU ARE ON A VERY IMPORTANT SKYPE CALL AND ARE NOT TO BE DISTURBED. All the above advice still applies.

That Pesky Ole Letter of Intent:

This was so hard for me to write. You can find all kinds of examples online, but the one I wrote ended up being a lot simpler than that. Once a researcher agrees to take you on, they'll be invested in you and want you to get in, so you can ask for help here. For those of you working with someone who you've worked with before (i.e. not a prof you emailed out of the blue), you can probably ask for some example letters past students have used- that's what helped me. This is the format mine ended up following (It was one page):

Paragraph one: gosh I sure am excited to be applying here and I really want to do graduate studies (yeah, I had to go a little ham here. Researching where I am is not my life's dream come true, but it is pretty sweet. So I had to embellish a little- with professional language, of course).
Paragraph two: This is all my research history and this makes me a great person to accept into your graduate program (this is also where you could talk about your super bitchin' GPA/publications if you have either of those)
Paragraph three: this is my extracurricular history. Look at how involved I was while still being a great student. This proves I can balance my life which would make me a good graduate student.
Paragraph four: this is why I really want to work with this researcher. I think her work is super cool and relevant to my past interests and also it even connects to my real, actual life.

Different schools may list different requirements for their letters- mine wanted me to talk about why I wanted to attend and get an MSc, why I was a good candidate, and mention extracurriculars I had done. So that's what I did. They may also want you to talk about your future plans. Something good to remember here is that you aren't signing a contract. Make plans and be convincing about your intent to follow them even if you're unsure. We're all unsure about where we'll be in five years, but you have to sound sure here. It's not lying, it's making a good plan. You don't have to stick to it. They're not going to take your degree away or kick you out because you said you were going to do a Ph.D in your letter and then decided to go become a teacher instead.

And this should go without saying- please put the address of the school at the top. Try to find out who will be reading your letter and address it to them, but otherwise address it professionally.

If it's just not going to happen right after your undergrad:

A little bit about me: this process didn't work for me because I didn't really try, which means my year off was a total accident. I didn't email enough profs, I didn't ask for enough help, and I didn't motivate myself with the endless stream of self-abuse in my head. I wasn't dealing with the mental distress I was having that made it almost impossible for me to work hard and focus the way I needed to in my last year. I didn't have the drive to pursue living, much less applying for graduate school (and that's not an over-dramatization, I was very suicidal for a long time and it really hurt me). But I'm still here, and I'm here to say: I still got in. I found a way. I finally landed on my feet- thanks to the help of some time away from the high pressure environment of school, parental support, a CBT book well-recommended by a much loved friend, and a supervisor with whom I have maintained a very good and close relationship for the past 7 years. Not to mention the overwhelming support of everyone in my life who knew what was going on, especially Redbeard. No one is an island, and I certainly didn't get through this alone.

If you're seriously feeling like crap and want to take a year off, I have three pieces of advice.

1) PLEASE FEEL BETTER. I know it seems silly and selfish to focus on this, but you cannot function effectively and efficiently until you are balanced again. If you're still in school, try to use those resources to find a therapist or something of that sort. Please tell someone about what you're going through- you're no more alone than I was. And please take some time to do something low-stress. I hope each and every one of you has something to fall back on, and there is no fucking shame in falling back onto someone or something. Most importantly: from someone who genuinely once believed it would never get better- it does get better. I mean, hey, you could say the same thing from where I am now- it does get worse. Of course it does! Life is a series of ups and downs, as you all know, and we have no way to predict how high the highs will be or how low the lows are. I hit a real low, but it didn't last forever. It lasted almost a year, but it still ended. I promise I promise I promise, if you hang around, you'll find a way to figure things out eventually. Sometimes that just takes more time than you expected.

2) Try to plan your year off if you can. A lot of people do take a year to work as a lab tech, but you kind of have to get this set up the year before or be extraordinarily lucky. This involves doing work around the lab for researchers as a job, and let me tell you, it's a lot more chill than being in your undergrad. If you want to travel or volunteer, that's also cool. If all you can manage is going back to your waitressing job or working at McDonald's, that's also OK.

3) Everyone is going to have opinions about what you should be doing. I know my boyfriend and several of my friends think I should have taken a shit service job (to be fair to myself, I submitted a lot of applications, but I don't have any service experience which really hurts me). Some people said I should travel since I had nothing better to do. I did work for a short period before having to leave because that work environment was just too stressful (that's not a cop-out, my boss was a micromanaging nightmare demon who barely let me do anything and didn't give me the resources to produce good work, and threatened to fire me for three weeks straight). I debated taking some classes in open studies, but that didn't work out. At the end of the day, please just know you're a worthwhile person deserving of love and kindness no matter what you're doing. You're not a failure for working as a waitress after getting a big fancy science degree. You're not a waste of space because you couldn't find a job, like me. You're not burning money uselessly if you decide to travel or volunteer or both. What other people think about your year off does not matter. To adapt the old saying: do whatever you want with a year off, because those who stick their noses in your business like uppity assholes don't matter and those who matter don't stick their noses in your business like uppity assholes.


I think that about wraps it up here. If you have any other questions or comments about how I have widely overgeneralized my specific personal experience, leave a comment below, if this actually reaches an audience wider than my close friends that still read it sometimes because they love me (and I love you too, you guys). I'll do my best to answer. Keep your head up and keep trying. You'll get there, I promise.

-swegan

The stuff about getting better

I don't know, man, sometimes you just have to come here and type and say what your brain is thinking.

My drafts folder on this blog are... good. It's a dated history of my depression (still undiagnosed, fwiw). I can look back now, with the knowledge I have, and see where I went wrong, see all the things I beat myself up about, see all the toxicity. I'm glad those posts never got published. They were just a bit too... emo/dark to share with other people. Too dramatic, too personal. Some of that stuff I've told other people anyway, in other words. Some of it I've figured out on my own.


I keep thinking about the future. In two weeks I move back home for grad school. A week later, I come back here. For the next two weeks, I travel with family and friends and then I spend a week packing up the rest of my life here and moving back home. My summer at home will consist of living with my family again- Freckles included. I have friends still in the city I can hang out with while I adjust to doing long distance with Redbeard. I'm not worried it won't work, just worried about being sad and things being hard. But in a way, I'm glad I'm not staying here.

The last school-related thing I did last April was go to the lab and make sure I hadn't left anything important behind, say my last goodbyes. I walked out towards home. It was a nice day, a sunny day. I was miserable. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. My summer job fell through because there's no fucking funding for science, much less for kids with my GPA, and I think at that point I may still not have had a place to move when my lease ended. I was trying to find a good time to bus home to get my car and other moving supplies, staying in the house while my parents were out of town. I sat on the grass and cried for half an hour. I was so sad that everything familiar was ending. How much had I wished to be doing anything else during all that studying? And now I'd give anything to have it back. Why had I applied to graduate? Why hadn't I just taken another year? Why hadn't I discussed moving back home with my parents? Everything was a mess.

I'd like to say I felt the comforting hand of what was then future-me. I'd like to say I believed it would all be okay, that I'd figure it out, but I didn't. I wish more than anything I could have given myself some comfort at that moment. But there wasn't. Eventually I had to go home and stop crying. Eventually I had to leave that spot.

Over the summer I came back to campus a couple of times. Redbeard was working on campus so sometimes I met him for lunch, other times I had to pick up grad stuff, or I thought campus would be a good place to work. But it just made me sad. I would walk through the old halls, take my old paths to class, and be overcome with emotion. Let me be clear- I loved getting my degree. I had a great time. I have a lot of good memories, and I'm still sad it's over, but in a better way now. But being on campus then just made me sad I didn't have a purpose there. September was worse. My sister was living with me, and going back to school on the campus I had just left. Redbeard was going to school. A lot of my friends were going back to school, and I was right to predict that that's when it really hit me- I wasn't going back to school. On the first day, Freckles got ready and left, Redbeard texted her to let her know he'd be on campus if she needed anything, and I... I probably sat around the apartment being sad. I felt so lost. It was sitting on the grass in quad all over again. A month later I watched Lorelai's graduation scene in gilmore girls- or more accurately, I skipped past it and bawled like a baby because it made me so upset.

When I had a job in November- for a nightmare micromanaging boss who refused to listen to anyone's ideas but his own- walking on campus was a little more okay. It felt good to be useful. To be doing something. Seeing people every day. Walking. Making money. I only wish it could have lasted longer and being fired had me scream-crying in a bathroom stall for half an hour before I went to get my things. I paid for another new ID card for that. It says alumnus on the back. Just another reminder.

But now, I get a new ID card. I get to live far away from what is now- and always will be- my alma mater. I don't think about wandering the halls anymore- but now it won't even be an option. I'll visit the city, but to see people, not my old academic haunts. Granted, I'll be going back to a lab I've spent a lot of time in already, but now in a new way. Now in the fall and the winter. Now I might even get a key (one can only hope- I got keys as an undergrad in a lab, I should get a building key as a master's student, right?). My parents are helping me rearrange my room so it doesn't feel like I'm reverting back to childhood.

In some ways, it feels really good to move on. To move forward. That was my word for the year, in the words of the cheesy feel-good self-help podcast I listen to semi-regularly: pick a word for the year. Forward. As in, away from the past. As in, I have trouble moving in this direction. As in: I need to practice making big life changes. It's time for a new one.

And this time I'm ready for it.

On Resolutions

Over Christmas, I got a book from my boyfriend about feminism. "Beauty Sick" was the title (Author: Renee Engeln, who has a whole entire Ph.D in this area). I read it, liked it, reviewed it on goodreads, had my reservations about it. It was pretty good. Of course, then my parents just had to ask about what it was about, which lead to a whole discussion about weight and health and beauty that just felt like it went nowhere, and they didn't care to admit that maybe I- and the book- had a point. It's really hard to have those conversations when one parent is a physician and the other was a nutritionist who talks endlessly about gut bacteria. I know they're smart, given how well they both perform in their respective field, but sometimes I question their advice. The takeaway from the conversation ended up as: weight can be an indicator of health, regardless of beauty, and just focusing on what your body can do and ignoring its weight is irresponsible.

I don't know why these things.. I don't want to use the word trigger, but that's what it does, it triggers my own damn insecurities. I used to not have these- which sounds completely unbelievable, except that I was wildly underweight for my entire damn childhood until I stopped dancing, and even then it took 6 years before I actually felt insecure about how much I weighed because some dresses I bought no longer fit me (I still have them. They are just too pretty to give up). Christmas is, hands down, THE WORST TIME to have this shit come up. My family eats terribly over Christmas- and there's that word, terribly. Is it really terrible to enjoy delicious home cooked food? To eat Christmas goodies? To sit and read in front of the fire and play board games and piece together puzzles? I really don't feel like it is, but of course, as they said, gaining weight is bad when it's out of control.

The process of trying to lose weight is a really odd one. For one, I have to approach it a certain way. If I'm too obnoxious about it, or too restrictive, or too obsessed, I damage my relationships. Nobody wants to hang out with the girl who won't eat with them at restaurants or who is constantly talking about how her change in diet is going (yes, friends, I am on that train: crash diets don't work, temporary changes don't work, you have to commit to changing forever). For another, I have been avoiding this for so long because I just fucking love candy. I have a massive sweet tooth. My mom would say that's the fault of my gut bacteria, and maybe they have changed since I started this endeavor, but who's to say. So I can't restrict myself or I'll go insane. I can't not eat "bad" food, like pasta (I really, really hate that carbs are the enemy now. It's basically the worst thing in the entire world), brownies, all that good shit. I keep maintaining that life just isn't as enjoyable without these foods, which of course I can't say around my parents anymore because then we get trapped in that cycle of That Conversation I Hate.

I've been tracking my food intake and exercise, is what I'm getting to here. Since the start of the year, not so much on the weekends. For better or worse I hit a point where I can't just keep gaining weight forever. At some point, it has to STOP. I know what my BMR is, so I can make sure the app doesn't trick me into starving myself (another app tried before, and that lasted all of a day after a lunch of green tea didn't really seem like the best option), but the rest is all guesstimation. I can't add recipes to the app without paying a monthly fee, so I've started calculating calorie amounts on my own for recipes, figuring out how much I ate on paper, and then plugging that into the app with a similar item. It is working. I've been genuinely trying to eat healthier foods- no more Kraft Dinner for lunch, you fool- and it is true that some foods make you feel very full while containing a low caloric value. I've been cooking more. I've been eating more plants. It's all very good. At the end of the day, especially after I've gone to the gym (and trust me, my friends, I am getting BUFF AF), sometimes I will have enough caloric room for like, 3 brownies, and I take advantage of that every time. So I'm doing okay. Slowly losing weight. Not spending a ton of time feeling hungry. But things have changed.

Mostly it's my own awareness of what I eat. If I keep track, I'm forced to confront the calories in everything I eat, which makes me feel like maybe a glass of orange juice at breakfast isn't the best option unless I really want some fucking orange juice. It makes me reconsider. It also makes snacking a lot less appealing, because when you snack it's hard to know how much you really ate and if you have to try and guesstimate that later- it's just a pain. I'd prefer to avoid it. So overall I'm probably eating less, and eating less candy because hot damn. And I have just given up trying to track during special events, like a party at my boyfriends' house last weekend (like an adult party for real adults with small children, not a woohoo alcohol party), or the girls' night I hosted on Friday (that was a woohoo alcohol party). It's just not worth it to me to not be able to let loose and have fun and trust my own judgement, although I suppose alcohol probably impairs that a little. If I tried to track that, I'd have to keep track of shit like how many triscuits did I eat and what volume of this salsa-boursin cheese mix did I ingest, like maybe 50ml? I have no clue and I just do not have the patience for that kind of bullshit. (The boursin-salsa thing, btw, is the most amazing invention in the world, and you have my dad's friends' family from Saskatchewan to thank for it: put a whole thing of boursin cheese on the middle of a plate. Pour salsa around it. Microwave until everything is warm. Et voila, pour a bowl of tortilla chips for dipping and your friends will love you FOREVER).

But now that it's working, I'm thinking ahead. Mainly the question is- when does this stop? On a semi-related note, I found a grad school supervisor and will submit my application later this week to start in May- I'll be moving back home to go to the university there, but it's my best option and I'm very happy about it. Of course, at the start of May, my family, plus my sister's friend and Redbeard, are going on a two week trip. How do I tackle both of those things? Do I have a set weight in mind? How do I even find where my body's natural set weight is when I don't maintain when I just eat how I feel? I used to think it was about 30 pounds below what I am now, but I'm starting to wonder if that's the case. Do I stop tracking when I get there? Do I track until I feel like I can trust myself? When is that point, exactly? Do I just get to pick a set weight? Am I going to have to buy new jeans again when the ones I bought to accomodate the weight gain no longer fit? And then, what do I do with those jeans? Do I keep them around just in case? Is that a bad idea? I have no idea where this thing ends. I'm starting to think I might just have to pick a set weight and aim to maintain it, and be prepared for that to not be the right number and to have to adjust my expectations. I also don't know how much the BMI can be trusted. According to that measure, I'm overweight. Which feels really odd to think about, since I don't think my body has changed too much. Most of my clothes I can still wear. My face is a little rounder, something which bothers me a lot (when you're constantly mistaken for being 6 years younger than you are, a rounder face does not help). I don't feel like "overweight" is a term I'd apply to myself. I feel like "average" is a better one. Maybe even "pretty healthy" at this point.


So what was the point of this post? It's just something I've been thinking about a lot recently. I really do loathe how much brain space this takes up now, but I do honestly think that for my own health, in a preventative way, I needed to make this change. I was already going to the gym and really enjoying it, actually (it's a women's only gym, too, which I LOVE). The food thing was secondary. I know I have friends who will probably insist that I'm fine- and I am. I'm not yet at the point where I'm horrifically out of shape, or unable to do things I could before (and fitting into those dresses doesn't fit this category since the dresses are the wrong size for me, not the other way around) (I'm still not giving them up though. One of them has pockets, you guys), or experiencing actual health issues (like someone close to me recently did due to weight gain, which yes, did spook me a little). I'm just trying to do what I think is right... and on that note, I seriously slept in today (lol "today") and it is time for a very late brunch.