Can't believe I'm saying this, but...

[mandolin]

Seriously - if your first class of grad school, a double-numbered class at that, reduces you to tears when you're less than halfway through the course, isn't that a good indicator that you're probably not cut out to tackle courses beyond that?

I can't rewrite a project proposal to pacify the members of my group in two days. I can't meet the technical expectations of at least one of our members. I can't even get one of the members to respond to any of my e-mails. I can't get a decisive answer out of my professor to save my life. I can't seem to wrangle a freaking thesis paragraph after half an hour of trying to work things out with another group member's help.

And I'm supposed to be in CHARGE.

Yeah.

Not exactly inspiring leadership. Not even coherent leadership, come to think of it.

If this is an indicator of things to come, I'm seriously considering trying my damnedest to somehow get a good paper grade this semester (just for my group members) and then getting out for my health.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm starting to think that grad school was a bad idea.

Comments

[lefthandsnake.livejournal.com]

Partway through my second year of grad school, I realized that I hated it. My supervisor and I hated each other's guts, my experiments weren't working, and I was miserable and tired. I ended up depressive, apathetic, hating every day and dreading every morning because I knew I'd have to go back and face another day of it. I was convinced that I had thrown away my chances for medical school, that there was no way anything good would come of this, that my name would be blackened and that everything had gone to hell. Meanwhile, a friend of mine, at a different university, went through the same struggle. She quit grad school after a year; I stayed in and finished. She's moved on and is working in a new field, now, one that she loves very much. I've got a Masters degree framed on my parents' wall at home and I'm in my own dream career.

What's the moral of the story? Nothing, I suppose, save to say that if you truly are miserable, then getting out won't be the end of everything. Chalk it up to a learning experience and move on to the next part. Or stick it through, stay with it, and with luck and goodwill, you'll come through on the other side stronger for having done so.

But don't make the decision based on one class, or even one assignment from one class. So it isn't going well - that's okay. That happens sometimes. Maybe it'll work out in the end and maybe it won't. Either way, will you ahve learned anything that can help you in the future, with grad school or with anything else? That should be the marker of success. One project isn't necessarily a marker of things to come. It could just be a rotten project. It's not a popular view in our society, but occasionally doing badly on something is good for you. I learned more about myself through that bad experience of grad school than I did through sixteen years of coasting through school with nary an effort.

Not all the projects and professors will be like this. Many will be better. A few might be even worse. It's just part of the range of experience.