For context: I have been seeing a therapist since October started (so 10 months now) and working on high-functioning depression and some level of underlying anxiety. This isn't a clinical diagnosis so much as... that language helps me sort out what's going on and helps me talk with my therapist (who is a psychologist). I also have to pass a comprehensive exam as part of my PhD exam. I was told that this had to occur sometime between 12-18 months after I entered the PhD program, which would be between January and June 2021. So I'd been planning my life around that basically. I also hadn't seen any other graduate students in the lab since March 19 until this week, including the two that started at the same time as me, who I saw today. These two are both 10+ years my senior and have MDs and have been to grad school already.
Today one of them shared with me that she passed her comprehensive exam. Only 6 months after passing her transfer exam. And as soon as I found this out I spiralled REAL bad into a full-blown mental breakdown (as I define it, which is basically just to say I could not get this thought out of my head and had to leave the lab as quickly as possible to cry all the way home in my car, desperately reaching for strategies to sort out what the fuck was happening to me. I tried first with something I've been working on with my therapist for anxiety, of identifying my feelings, identifying the what ifs, figuring out what it would mean about me if those what-ifs were true, and then sorting out the root belief that is causing me pain... but the problem was this wasn't an anxiety feeling. These were depression thoughts. Anxiety, for me, is anticipating the worst. Depression is believing the worst is already true.
Why didn't you think of that? You could have been done this already. Why can't you manage your graduate program like she can? Now she just has 3 years to focus and research. Why aren't you proactive like that? You're not meant to be here, you have no idea what's really going on which as I sat and analyzed and analyzed and analyzed on the way home boiled down into Why the fuck are there all these rules and guidelines if nobody is going to follow or enforce them, like do any of them actually matter or am I making myself crazy following them which I then identified as an enneagram thing- hear me out- because as an enneagram 6, I know that I constantly look for guidance externally and my whole life is basically just evaluating authority figures to decide whether to trust them or not and then trusting them with sometimes damaging blind loyalty, and being really confused and uncomfortable with the fact that people are just a mix of good and bad, all the time, in all aspects of their life.
I connected that to the fact that I am getting next to no guidance on this journey. I am trying to learn and follow the rules after figuring out that my supervisor isn't going to keep tabs on me, and trying to keep tabs on myself, only to learn sometimes the tabs don't even matter, or that I'm the only one that cares about them. Except sometimes they DO seem to matter, and how things are enforced is very arbitrary to me and it is exhausting trying to figure out which rules are going to be used against me and which rules I am using against myself for following them for no damn reason.
Example: I am required to have two committee meetings a year. I did not think this was a hard and fast rule. Except when I tried to transfer and the SGS tried to say I wasn't in good standing (while simultaneously deciding I would get an $11,000 award that SAME semester which I wouldn't find out about until THIS semester) because I had only had one committee meeting that year, so I pulled together some data, sent it to my committee members, and got them to sign the form. The rule didn't matter insofar as I needed to have an actual committee meeting. I just needed my committee members to sign a form saying "yeah, she's fine, she's doing well" and give that to the SGS.
Example: I had to undergo an hour of training for this pandemic specifically, and sign a form saying I understood the lab safety rules after an hour long meeting of being told to wear a mask, wear goggles, avoid coming in at the same time, don't spend more than 4 hours on campus, etc... only to find people not wearing masks (nor goggles- but somehow I sussed out that that rule was bs) nor doing all this scheduling they said they were going to be doing to make sure we weren't coming in at the same time. The person who had me sign the form I witnessed an hour later having a maskless conversation in a small room he did not have a reason to be in with another maskless person. Many times I come into the lab to see maskless people who only put on their mask once they see me with mine.
And countless other tiny examples of little rules I thought were real only to find out I was stressing myself out about following them for no reason or little rules I thought were bs only to find out they were being enforced for no reason and me not following them had severe consequences.
So that's how a colleague sharing good news led to me having to fight back thoughts of you'll never figure this out or be good enough, just kill yourself, it's never going to get better to get to the understanding that I HATE WHEN PEOPLE DON'T FOLLOW THE RULES EVENLY. Why bother having rules that aren't enforced or followed alongside ones that are? How are people supposed to exist in that environment??? And somehow I'm the stupid one for not magically knowing which is which? This is what I mean when I say I feel like everyone else in the world knows something about being an adult that I missed the memo on. How the fuck are you all sorting through this??? I CANNOT FIGURE IT OUT.
And I'm angry. As far as I can tell I'm the only one in the lab struggling with this. It is so much work to pull my stupid ass brain back from the edge of the cliff every goddamn day. I am so tired of it. It's so stupid! Other people's brains don't do this!!!!! Why does mine?
But because I can't change that fact, I am instead deciding that from here on out I am making a habit of asking myself "Does this feel right to me?" before I make decisions where I feel uncertain. Wearing a mask all the time in the lab. Yep, feels right. Doing my comprehensive exam over the summer? Feels like a bad idea. My original plan of doing it in the winter works better for me. I've planned out my life around that. It's not going to negatively impact my degree. It's just going to be different.
Micro decisions about when I work and how much I do in the lab day to day? Remains to be seen. But I'm coming to realize if I don't grow even a SHRED of self confidence in the way I'm doing things I'm going to lose my mind, so I'm doing them my way from now on and I'm gonna be obnoxious about it until it becomes a habit. Maybe it takes me a year to write a review paper before it's ready to be submitted! Maybe it takes me an extra day to do a western blot because I don't feel like staying an extra 4 hours in the lab! Who the fuck cares!!!! It's not their project! It's not their degree! It's not their SANITY on the line! GOD I'm done.
-swegan
