What is a Blog anyway

 I doubt anyone has noticed since I have a readership of like, maybe 10 people on a good day (not counting the Russian bots), but recently I went back and unpublished all the posts I made before I started my undergrad- so everything before September 2013. Reading those old entries was painful. Mostly because they were so badly written and clearly stream-of-consciousness, not because I was going through a lot at the time. I didn't really want those out there associated with me anymore, and I don't really want other people to be able to go back and read them even if they're able to picture a much younger version of myself writing them.

I've also been thinking a lot lately about actually using this blog for something. I don't know where I got this idea, but I have this sort of... itch in my brain to do something creative, and this has always been a really easy outlet for me. I have a lot of different ideas for things I could do, some of which work much better as a podcast, but the end goal is just to have a kind of project to work on that isn't related to grad school or therapy (even if I make a lot of blog posts about those things anyway).

Recently I've drafted several posts about little how-to guides, similar to the one I made a while back about getting into a master's degree. The motivation for that post was basically that I wish that guide had existed for me somewhere, so I made it assuming that other people were also in my shoes. The posts I have drafted are also similar- the goal with them is to use my own personal experience to help others and write the guides I wish I could have had. It's a bit like writing to my past self, in a way. Sometimes it's kind of comforting to think that if only I could have the wisdom of me from a year, five years, ten years, 20 years from now, I'd feel better, more capable, more confident, more secure, more trusting of goodness in my life. I also found at those points in my life that advice online never felt quite right, it never took into account the things I wanted it to. Sometimes the way I figure out how to do something new is by asking what I wish already existed but doesn't, and then asking if I can create that myself. In this case, the answer is obviously yes.

Sometimes it's tempting to think that I wouldn't be as depressed as I am now if I'd had those guides, whether that's because I wouldn't have made mistakes that led me to the wrong place or because I would have just been able to trust that things work out. Of course, I don't need to have guidance from my future self to have faith in those things anyway. I just really, really wish that having faith in them was easy, and it's not.

Ideally I'd like some more engagement- my mind runs wild with grandiose ideas that I could get a good patreon going and make an insane monthly salary just for producing content, but I have enough experience getting new things off the ground to know that even if that were a reality for me, it's a ways away. Groundwork has to be laid first, and then I have to build on that to get to a place where trying for something like that is even possible. But I can put in groundwork and building work, so really... it's not impossible.

I've been taking in a lot of stories of creative people lately- mostly from tiktok, don't judge- who have little etsy stores and work hard on them only to see them suddenly take off with a stroke of good, viral luck, and have that allow them to fulfill a dream. I see these little creators who are not rich by any stretch of the imagination, nor the best of their kind ever, happy because they are doing what they wanted to do, able to support themselves a bit with it, and also getting better at their craft every day. I'd like to think that's possible in writing through blogging.

I also ran this idea past some friends last night over drinks and dinner (this is something we can do where we are- servers and staff are required to wear masks, the menus are disposable, and the entire restaurant is set up to facilitate social distancing). It was so refreshing to realize it's not just me who thinks about things like starting a podcast, writing a book, doing something creative and putting it out there. Maybe that's just a feature of being in your 20s. The conversation wasn't necessarily super hopeful, but it was a good one nonetheless (a friend even suggested what I think is a good contender for a blog name).

People make blogs all the time to document, like, their eating disorders, or their struggle through college, or being a young parent. I'm a graduate student constantly riding that line of having problems but not really, even in retrospect. I have a lot of advice I wish I could give to my previous self- mostly concrete at the moment, and I really like to think there's someone out there who could benefit from either feeling like they're not the only one struggling now, at a similar place in life as I am, or feeling like they have another guide or more advice that I like to think is different or offers something new.

In all honesty it would be nice to get contributions from others. So if you are seeing this, I ask you this: think about a struggle you went through in your past where you felt like you couldn't find the right advice, or any good advice. It can be anything, it can be very concrete (getting into grad school, buying a car, etc) or more abstract (figuring out what to do with your life, realizing your mental health is a problem, etc). Write the guide you wish you had found when looking for help, advice, guidance, whatever. What do you wish was added to the considerations? What specifically did you learn only through experience? Who else do you think might have gone through something similar? Can your advice be tailored to them?

Those are basically the questions I go through, albeit more informally. When I wrote the post about getting into grad school, I remembered feeling frustrated that nothing seemed to be about a master's program. All the advice I could find about contacting professors felt stale, scripted, and useless. Most of the information was American. It did not take into account that I didn't have a stellar GPA, even if it was still good, so the advice about having a bad GPA didn't work either. It assumed that I was not depressed. It assumed that I was trying to get into a PhD program (this was actually the biggest problem). It assumed that I'd already done a lot of things- in high school, undergrad, whatever- that I maybe hadn't done. And then I started to think about my ideal guide- something that would have carried me perfectly through the process. And then I wrote it.

I think I'll stick to that theme for now. If anybody I know is reading this- message me with your thoughts if you're so inclined. If you want to comment, comment. I'd love to hear some thoughts.

Funny how those things work

Like, I don't want to call this a trigger, but I don't have a better word for what just happened to me this morning so let's lay it all out here.

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

I'm also not like, blind to what's going on, in case anyone was wondering

Like I guess this counts as my "platform" but considering the only readers I have are like, weird russian bots and people I know in real life, and the fact that I have never in any way, shape, or form tried to make this profitable, readable, popular, etc and have NO interest in that being the case, I do not and will not put myself in the category of someone with a platform. I don't have influence to the point that it's a job, or a side hustle, or some kind of moral necessity. And yet... I'm still here writing this.

This whole month has given me the gift of people opening up about their experiences to me. Talking to me about this. Making new connections. It's helped me see which of my friends cares about this enough to say "you know what, even if it's uncomfortable for me, I should probably share a thing or two that resonated with me"and which of my friends seem to be of the opinion that "I won't share, but I will be open about this personally with people I am close to" and which of my friends are still saying "I just don't wanna." It's white privilege to be able to ignore this and just continue your life, you know. Society is built for you to ignore it. You're okay being complacent in that? I also don't want to say there's some overlap with friends who have said absolutely nothing in any capacity and friends who attended a "ghetto" themed party in high school (DESPITE me protesting that the theme was OVERTLY and CLEARLY racist) but like... there is. (I also know some people just don't post on social media at all, really, and I've seen nothing from them for months- I know that people use that kind of stuff differently).

And also honestly like.. the world does NOT need my opinion on this. I'm a highly privileged white woman and while I'm intelligent and empathetic, we can all see how this problem does not affect my life. I live in a majority white city in a majority white neighbourhood. I didn't see any real diversity in skin tone until I attended a major university. The vast majority of my friends are white. At least half my colleagues are white, and I can see fields around me that are vastly majority white. And this is the point where I'm supposed to say that's not a bad thing, bla bla white people are good, but there is literally an entire social system here set up for them to think that as a default so I'm not going to bother. It should be obvious that I don't hate myself for being born white- I obviously can't help that, nobody can. But is the whiteness of all that a good thing? Objectively not. It makes me more comfortable because everybody assumes I belong... but I don't think I deserve to feel comfortable for that. I deserve to feel like I belong in that space because I do- I earned my way there (aware of how some of that was unearned as well), I want to be there, I am there, I'm contributing. Not because I'm fucking white and "of course white people do science!" Literally FUCK that attitude. That's what I mean when I say whiteness in the space I work in is objectively bad. That's what it is.

That's something I've been trying to check in myself lately. It's literally the smallest thing I can do, and I know that. but when I drive through an unfamiliar neighbourhood, I know nobody will call the police or give me funny looks, because I'm white. I know that if I'm on campus late and it's dark and I'm walking to my car with my hood up, people just assume I'm a student who belongs there, because I'm white. When people see pictures of me they will be less likely to assume I'm not capable, that I was given something unfairly, that I didn't earn my way to where I am (of course sexism still impacts me, but that's pretty much the only ism). People assume I belong, I'm right, I'm good, I'm smart, etc. I'm never the only person of my race in ANY space I'm in, ever. Nobody questions my presence in a space and if they do, I know they won't become aggressive. Nobody calls the police because I play music VERY loudly in my neighbourhood just because I like it. I am at the point where I flat out feel that I may have been given better treatment- more attention, more care, less hostility- as a graduate student in my program because I am white. Everybody looks at me and assumes I speak English and doesn't ask where I came from because of course I came from this part of the world. People look at me and assume I am capable, smart, and will do good things, that I am a good person doing good things, that I will be easier to deal with, etc. I'm not naive enough to think that doesn't affect how people treat me. If the colour of my skin means things to people before I ever say a word, it affects how they treat me. This isn't hard.

So when people tell me things have happened to them because of their race or describe their racial experience to me, I trust them, and I remember what they said, and I make the mental effort to think about how situations are different for me because I am white. I also make the mental effort to try and question my assumptions. I can't stop whatever automatic thoughts have been coerced into my brain, but I can try to examine them- therapy is already teaching me how to do this. Is there evidence to back this up? What is really going on here? Where did I learn this story? Sometimes the answer still eludes me, but I feel morally called to do that work, inside myself, all the time. Again: literally the tiniest thing I can do. I'd like to imagine the power it could have if every white person could do it, though. Question their assumptions about race. Look for the evidence. Be critical. Be open. Be curious. Hold themselves to a higher standard and accept that sometimes the answers don't come to you immediately or that you will resist them because they are so uncomfortable. 

Between that, reading some books, reading and sharing a lot of instagram posts, and donating money, I'm trying to help. Maybe this is performative, I don't know, but I also want to be part of the reason you can't ignore this issue anywhere you go, including your opinionated feminist friend's personal blog. So here it is.

-swegan

We're really testing my ability to call myself a homebody

Let me weave you a tale of me in mid-March: stressed. Very stressed. As always. It was marking time and I had a lot of lab reports to get through again, and I knew the last lab report, consisting of the two longest sections, was something I was going to have to mark next. I was juggling bridesmaids drama- namely that one of the bridesmaids was, if not definitively a piece of shit person, decidedly acting like one, and the other helpful bridesmaids and I were trying to put together a bachelorette party 3 weekends before the wedding in mid-April. I was going to the gym twice a week, which had a positive effect on my mental health that cannot be understated (and for 25% the price of therapy, too!), and was looking forward to my teaching duties being done early so I could start to get some real work done on my project. I was going to try Baby's First Apoptosis Assay once marking was really, truly done, get some positive controls for my CB1 western blots, find a way to isolate protein with a broken sonicator, finish my RNA experiments, and see about ordering a new cell line. 

I met with my supervisor on Wednesday, something akin to seeing Bigfoot in the woods, and taught all day on Thursday, something akin to having a hangnail that you just KNOW you can't trim until you get home even though it keeps getting caught on your sleeve. With a fellow graduate student and TA, I shared that I thought that the university would really try to wrap up the remaining two weeks of the semester before shutting down. There were only two weeks left. Only two other major institutions in the country had shut down at this point. I was silently mustering strength in the background to get through the next month of my life, which was going to be extremely busy and require delicate time management.

And then they brought the hammer down.

Classes- cancelled. Labs, including the one I taught- cancelled. In-person meetings cancelled. Suddenly we had to tell the PIs exactly when we'd be in the lab and for how long, and I was instructed to wear a mask when in the lab at all times- despite me only going in at 7pm or later and being completely alone the entire time. A week later I was advised by the same PIs to freeze my cells and not return to campus. I keep kicking myself for having left a bunch of stuff in my "office"- a charging cord, several types of tea, some snacks, a little cactus that is actually just a painted rock, a sense of normalcy- you know. But at the time I don't think anyone could have predicted just how long we'd be gone. I still haven't been back- that marks almost three full months out of the lab- the same amount of time I lost to the move to the new building last summer. Given how much more slowly we're going to have to proceed when we get back, I'm thinking it's safe to say I've now lost a lot more time than just three months.

The bachelorette party never happened. The wedding did. I attended it on zoom, something I cannot recommend against enough. There are few things more painful than watching one of your best friends get married over a low-quality web stream in which their other friends and relatives will not stop spamming the chat with smart ass comments and you can't hear any of the vows, but CAN clearly hear the officiant say "well, at least the people who really mattered were able to be here with you today." I imagine one of the things more painful is having to try and reschedule your wedding in the context of a major global pandemic, just to be clear. While I'll still be able to party it up in my bridesmaids dress I paid $100 extra to rush-order which is currently the most ironic thing that has ever happened to me, I'm still processing the pain of that experience in private, on my own time. I think a lot of us are doing that right now.

Oh, by the by- I'm engaged now too. Redbeard and I will someday get married- also someday we will live together BEFORE getting married, but of course the two-posts-ago-mentioned breaking of his leg delayed his program by a semester, so now we get to move in January during the same semester of my comprehensive exam, and before you say that we could just live with my parents for a semester, you haven't been living with my parents, which I would advise you to keep in mind. I would much rather throw away money on rent than listen to my parents talk for one more second about how rent is just throwing away money.

That's the kicker, too- I went to see Redbeard in person, so fortunately my engagement was not via low-quality web stream, but was instead by a high quality real life stream, with a ring gently nestled inside of a container of flyfishing flies, right between my favourites- the hoppers (which I used this weekend knowing full well it was way too early for fish to be interested in anything that juicy). However, my ever-paranoid mother has insisted upon my return both that I have to get tested (which will happen in about 24 hours and inevitably come back negative) and that I have to quarantine in my room for 14 days. Now I am about one week into that, and I feel as though my sister is about one more time preparing a meal for me away from just hugging me in full view of our parents so we can be quarantined together. It really is something to come home from getting engaged and not feeling a single human touch for two weeks. Probably also on that list of things more painful than attending your best friend's wedding over a low-quality web stream, along with having to live apart from your fiancee for another 6.5 months. This is despite the fact that neither Redbeard nor any of his outdoorsy friends he's been in contact with have reported having The Virus (and I know he would tell me if he was quarantining for that reason, if not because he knows I'd want to know, then because it would mean two weeks not being in the mountains and that would be quite difficult for him). Let me repeat: there is literally no basis to having me do this besides the fact that my mother does not see that she clearly has an anxiety disorder and needs to go to therapy so the rest of us can stop tiptoeing around her feelings lest we trigger another passive aggressive silent treatment.

And then comes the fun realization that this pandemic has fucked us all up, to the point that I'm almost certain I'm not the only one that can't watch movies anymore because any scene containing two or more people from different households in close proximity activates my fight-or-flight response and seems extremely unrealistic. We all took it as a given that it was safe to be social and enjoy the company of others, and that was ripped away, and we all know we can't move to some kind of online pod society where we never interact with others in person because humans are social creatures by nature and as such we now must find a way to end this situation such that we can like, hug each other again, or collectively we're going to lose it.

So for once I'm using some of the tags for this blog that I made when I was like, 13, and never bothered to change because I figured those were all the classifications I'd ever need, and then stopped using when I inevitably didn't need them anymore. Because you know what? This fully classifies as :(, dread and the like, low points, and sad stuff. Thanks, 13 year old me. I hope you all out there are okay.

reflections on burnout

I passed my transfer exam. I don't think anybody reading this is a real, genuine stranger, just friends who sometimes remember that this blog exists and kindly take a gander (hello, friends). But I felt it relevant to get that out there. I'm a PhD student now.

After the exam I went home and slept, and then later got a text from the postdoc asking when my RNA would be ready for sequencing. I told her I had 30 samples and would get them done by the end of the week. Of course then I ran out of tubes, so I only did 15. I farted around until Sunday, when I did all of my Christmas shopping in one day (mostly), then on Tuesday I went back in and did the rest of the RNA via borrowed tubes. On Wednesday morning I passed that off to the tech in the lab who is the RNA master, and then I left to get my sister from the airport. I have not been in the lab since December 18. And for a whole entire week and a half, I didn't do anything related to school.

Now I realize how severely and completely burnt the fuck out I was. Sleeping in until 10 AM even though I was waking up at like, 6:30, spending another hour or two scrolling on my phone, eating some small, pathetic breakfast around noon, going into the lab at like 2:30 after watching movies for two hours, puttering around being pathetic and leaving at like 5, coming home intending to work and ending up just watching TV with my parents and eating dinner until I'd inevitably shower or go to bed. And that was all the days. Going into the lab took so much convincing, and I hated it so much (reminds me of my fourth year when experiments failed because I couldn't be bothered to go in and check on my stupid flies on the weekend).

How did I think that was me at my best? Looking back, there are so many signs that I was desperate for a break, including but not limited to my own therapist telling me I was working too hard and needed a break. Why do you think you were scrolling for 2 hours every day? Why do you think you couldn't even talk about your transfer exam for 48 hours after without openly and fully weeping? Why do you think you spent study days just watching netflix for 6 hours only to finally feel and be productive at 7 pm? YOU NEEDED A FUCKING BREAK.

I think the truth is this: I do not work to earn a break, I take breaks to store up energy to do work. Sometimes I don't have time to take breaks, and I have to power through, and in some ways I think last semester was one of those times. But YOU DO NOT WORK TO EARN A BREAK. That is not how it works. That is nonsensical. You can't work without energy, and you gain energy from breaks. It's literally That Simple.

Of course, real life is complicated and people are demanding and people who are in charge of me or my peers who don't have high functioning depression (that is an actual real diagnosis-of-sorts from an actual psychologist now, so I'm just going to say it) set the bar where they think it's reasonable to set it. And I guess sometimes that's just not where I can set the bar.

I've said SO MANY TIMES that my real life is happening while I'm in graduate school too. I'm not just pausing it to get a degree. I'm in a relationship, making friendships, pursuing self growth aggressively, getting older, etc... all while in grad school. But I don't think I was really taking that seriously enough last semester, or maybe I just didn't have the option to do so.

At least the truth is this now: in terms of workload, I will basically repeat last semester, but without the stress of applying to transfer, and I will be making more money (the offer I got for my PhD was just to teach one lab per YEAR- let me let it be known that previously I was teaching 4 per year, 2 in the fall and 2 in the winter- but they need me to teach genetics labs so badly that someone is writing the Dean on my behalf to say "you need to pay this grad student more because nobody else can cover this slot, and these undergrad students need to be taught", which is AMAZING- this is on top of my stipend increasing slightly as I am not a master's student anymore). That is... quite an opportunity, if I've ever seen one. I mean, I now have until 2023 to be at school, getting this degree- though I don't necessarily want to stay that long- but this semester is a definite chance to just like... figure out how to work efficiently. I've been here almost 2 years, and I honestly can't tell if that's enough time to figure out how to do grad school at all or not. Oh well.


And the reason I always write shit like this, that's unfiltered and real, is that I find a lot of things written about grad school are ... they spare a lot of detail, so to speak. They just say "oh I was depressed, not leaving my house a lot" etc, which I guess is maybe helpful for some people, and it's certainly better than nothing. But if any of you are struggling in the way where you still get shit done and pass exams but feel horrible inside and have no self care and never fucking prioritize rest at all so you get things done but they drain you so much and you can't say anything because nobody would see it... I feel you. That's my reality. And for the love of GOD there is nothing wrong with you, please take your nearest exit from work and stay out of it as long as you feasibly can and chill for a while.

i took a mental health day

on the heels of my old roommate going back to work after 5 months of mental health leave. I don't know if she knows that I notice, but I'm glad she's happy. She was one of the pretty, popular, normal girls that was always kind to me in a very genuine way, who seemed to really want to know me as a person. People who treat other people that way always go very far in life. I wish I had been able to tell her that two and a half years ago. I guess she maybe needed it.

In the past two weeks, two different people I know have broken their legs, so let's start at my last therapy appointment two weeks ago, when I was feeling good: I was in survival mode. I just had to get through the grind until Thursday and then I could be done and go see my sister for the weekend. I stayed up until 3 am that night, grading, because I thought it had to be done by Thursday, and I wanted to have a good chunk done for the lab meeting on wednesday morning.

When I arrived to this meeting, on 5 hours of sleep (which I understand is a lot for some people, but I do not function well on less than 6), the coordinator was on the ground. Which is a very odd place to see a male authority figure. Turns out he had slipped and broken his ankle, and he tried his very best to give us instructions for the week. One of his notes was that he sure as hell wouldn't be able to finish grading now, so it was okay if the rest of us couldn't. Please let me bring you back to the fact that I had, just prior to this meeting, awoken from what was essentially a nap after grading for something like 15 hours (which involved a lot of breaks, don't get me wrong). So we- the TAs- made plans for how to cover for it, one of the TAs ended up teaching every day that week, which only made me admire her more, and we dealt with it. And I didn't do any more grading. I still have grading. Our students understood; they had a midterm on Friday and wanted to be able to study, and were happy to not have an assignment.

On Friday I drove for 6 hours, twice past a bus that said "Marriage is permanent, to separate before death part is ADULTRY" which so efficiently encapsulates the Vibe of the rural areas of my province, and saw my sister. It was a good weekend, actually- I bought new shoes that are actually waterproof, and some new bras so I didn't have to keep wearing just one, and I saw 3 dear, dear friends I had not seen in a very long time. While I was there, Redbeard decided to head down to the mountains as per usual. So I did not see him.

I brought my sister home, which was another 6 hours of driving and idle chatting, and three days were just normal, except for how badly I wanted to be alone at the end of the day, leading me to stay at school until 10 pm because I just did not want to come home and have to make conversation and watch stupid movies and eat the horrible vegetarian lasagna recipe my mother had found and made since my sister is vegetarian. On Wednesday, I emailed my supervisor.

The previous week, I had sent her a copy of my new thesis proposal, which needs to be submitted to my transfer committee two weeks before my transfer exam. I was told, and my supervisor and I both genuinely believed this, that my transfer exam had to take place before December. She told me my committee was settling on a date in late November. If you do the math, last week was two weeks before that deadline. She gave me the notes on Wednesday, which included adding a whole new section on a whole new tumor. I realized I was going to have to do the best I could by Friday, and told my family I wouldn't be up for socializing too much. They understood. I got out of cleaning out the basement. I told Redbeard to delay visiting me until Friday so he wouldn't distract me. I stayed up until 3 am on Thursday night.

Two things happened between the hours of 9 pm Thursday night and 9 am Friday morning which really fueled my current collapse. The first was a call from Redbeard on Thursday night, which was not actually from Redbeard, but from a friend phoning to tell me he had broken his leg quite badly and was in the hospital in a little mountain town a few hours away. The friend told me he was otherwise fine, and that I was not to come visit that instant. I did not. I planned to visit the next day, after I had submitted my proposal. I stayed up until 3 am reading papers, adjusting the proposal, reading more papers, and finally giving in to sleep. I woke up at 7:30 am.

In the morning, my parents informed me very kindly that they had booked a hotel room for me for two days so that I could go see him, a great kindness considering the expense of booking in hotels in that area. Shortly afterwards, I received an email from the school of graduate studies. Congratulations. Your transfer exam has been set for December 11.

AKA two weeks after it was supposed to be set.

Needless to say I have not read any papers since I got that email, and aside from putting my cells in a buttload of media (aka food for cells), I have not gone back to the lab. On 4.5 hours of sleep, I drank coffee for the very first time as I made another long drive in the dark, alone. I sat with my boyfriend in the hospital as he came off the numbing from his surgery and suffered in a 6/10 bout of pain for two hours until I finally told him that they ought to give him more painkillers, he finally asked, and was given morphine. The next day I went in in the morning and helped him leave the hospital once they'd gone through all the how-tos and given him prescriptions for some very powerful painkillers. I paid for his crutches. I carried all his things to his car and drove him to the hotel and parked in a very stupid spot. I set him up in the room and asked for a shower chair and a second parking pass and got garbage bags and ice and lunch, all while my new boots I'd bought the previous weekend worked themselves further into the already- bleeding blisters on my ankles. I convinced him to just go to the hotel restaurant and asked for a special table and carried a pillow and a garbage bag full of ice and guarded his foot as others walked by. I moved almost all of his gear into my car and took it home with me.

In the morning, I drove his car to a nearby town with considerably better free parking, and got a ride back from a friend of his I'd never met, at 7:30 in the morning. I packed my car even more full with our remaining things and he insisted on helping, and therefore carried one backpack. We got brunch and did a very painful (on his part physically, on my part emotionally as he refused to let me get the car so he could stop walking) short hike and had a small snack. I dropped him off at his car, picked up another friend, and helped move things between cars again, before getting into my own car and driving 3.5 hours to a gas station where I had to pull over because I could not stop crying and thinking about walking in front of a truck.


This morning I woke up and sincerely, truly did not want to have woken up. I knew what was in store for me today: marking, marking, and more marking, restarting experiments that take a ton of time, starting other new ones that are physically exhausting and often disappointing. I stayed in bed until almost noon just crying.


And then I just went... okay, if this isn't the kind of day where I can say no, what is? What will the limit be? Will it be the day I actually try to walk in front of traffic? Will it be the day I try to swallow a bunch of pills? Will it be the day I don't even eat? If I am really, truly, living my life right now as everything happens around me so much, why am I not allowed to say no?

So I did.

I have not done any work today. The only person I have talked to is my mother. I have unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, cleaned old dishes out of my room, drank copious amounts of water, watched eat pray love in its entirety despite the fact that I do not care for julia roberts, and I am working my way through the laundry so I have pants to wear again. I will have a shower and take out some trash later. I will probably get to marking.

All of this is to say that I'm not sure I can call myself depressed so much as I can call myself overwhelmed. And maybe this isn't what other people's mental health days look like, but I thought... if I can't have one FUCKING day to myself to do all the things i have been putting off in service of things that were "more important" then do I really want to live this life? The answer was no. So I took one fucking day.

I will go back to work tomorrow. I don't have the luxury of taking 5 months off right now. But I will go back with clean sheets and clean clothes and a slightly cleaner room. I will go back with just a little more energy to tackle what needs tackling. I will have had one day to not deal with all the problems in my life- the marking, the reading, the proposal, the boyfriend with a broken leg, the fact that I can't move out of my house until my boyfriend graduates, and now that he can't finish his clinical rotations he probably can't graduate on time which adds another 8 months to our long distance, the transfer exam, the fact that I can't tell what time of day it is anymore sometimes, let alone what day it is.

I kept thinking that was avoidance. But I realized: the only way I can tackle these problems is if I have the energy to deal with them. I don't have any energy. I need to find some first.

So tomorrow I have another therapy appointment, and today I took a mental health day. I hope anyone reading this is having fewer crises than me.

For fucking REAL tho being the teacher is worse than being the student

I had this epiphany while marking 61 thoroughly mediocre lab assignments. Let me lay this down for you.

I understand students have multiple classes. I understand they have multiple assignments due at a time and a plethora of other real-life shit to attend to. I get that- I fucking lived it, I get that. But here's the thing. When a student hands in an assignment, it's VERY obvious when they haven't given it their very best (I'm talking real stupid errors easily caught by literally proofreading your paper even ONCE, and major misunderstandings of what it was they even DID, and wording things so vaguely and confusingly that I don't even know if there's anything there to mark). But that's okay for them to do, they get to take a slightly lower grade and move along, and nobody gets mad at them for that.

Let's flip the tables. If I don't give my absolute very best when I'm grading, I get students hounding me about simple mistakes I made that could have been avoided with a quick review of my marking. I get students asking me why they were docked marks, which could have been avoided with me writing more comments (and just trying harder to get carpal tunnel). At the worst, I get called a picky bitch who is deliberately being unfair. I don't get to give anything less than 100% on marking, there are severe consequences for me.

You see where I'm going here?

Students get to slack off, pass the class, and move along. I have no choice but to be absolutely perfect at all times. I expect my students to give me their best effort: to read the lab manual ahead of time. To ask me questions when they are confused. Heck, even just having their work ready on time. Following formatting guidelines and simple instructions. Paying attention to me in lab. Starting their assignment more than just the night before, putting in some actual effort, and proofreading it once. And they can't even give me this.

They give me less than their very best at ALL TIMES. They give me mediocre, lackluster, don't care, and demand perfection from me in return. That is the definition of unfair. It is not fair to demand perfection of me if you won't meet me at that level. So either you give me your best and I give it back in return, and then you can complain when I slip through the cracks just as I dock you for mistakes, or you act mediocre and I don't focus as much when grading your assignment, and you don't get to complain to me when you fuck up.


"But my grade is in your hands!" bruh. It's in your hands too. Get your life right.

If you can't give your instructor your very best- you need to remedy that. Take fewer courses at a time. Switch to a program that actually matches your interests and talents- or be prepared to put in more work than everyone else that has the aptitude and interest you don't. Take time to save up money for school. Let me know when you aren't feeling well so I can give you extensions. Let me know about the accommodations you need. Take some time off, see a therapist, work with friends on assignments, ask me for help. Figure out what you need to succeed and how you can give that to yourself, otherwise you're being unfair not just to yourself, but to the instructors who have to deal with you.

It's only fair.