Every day is a new record low.
Being depressed about your work in grad school is a different kind of depressed. I’ve been through my share of low spells – been on prozac and the whole nine yards – but this is different, though I think in a good way. When I was a teenager, depression could eat my whole life. I didn’t have anything to do, no responsibilities to live up to, and depression could occupy entire days or weeks uninterrupted. Now, my life is so busy I don’t have time to sputter that long. I can only acknowledge it, come up with some way to cope, and move on. I guess blogging today is one of those ways of coping.
The heart of the matter is that I’m not entirely sure I can do it – that I’ve found the place where my willingness to do something is outstripped by the demands of the task. Lewis and I often discuss what makes grad school so damned hard, and I always come back to stamina. The pace of life is so unnatural, so unlike any other environment I’ve been in. There are whole months of non-communication, weeks and weeks spent working for a boss who doesn’t exist, on a project of your own invention which will either be approved or not, and which will not be acknowledged by any but a handful of professors who mostly forget that you depend on their graces and would appreciate expediency and thoroughness. I feel like I’m traveling to the moon and NASA forgot they sent me up. The only payout is being safely ensconced back where I started, and a souvenir rock I can feel the pride in knowing I picked up myself. This must be enough to sustain, and it is, in the big-picture view. It’s the thousands of minute microsteps between here and there that sap the life from you. Every time I set another foot down, the ground is so unsteady… and I’m getting so tired. How do you keep going on?
In some ways, I want to spit out a bunch of facts about how hard I’ve been working and why I deserve to be this exhausted. There are no numbers, though, and an enumeration of this type always comes off as some kind of challenge. I’m not suggesting I’m working any harder than any other graduate student – or anyone else, for that matter. All I know is that I’m working harder than I seem to be capable of sustaining. I’m at the point where I’m banking on the idea I’ll burst into flame and be reborn of my ashes – suddenly a competent and knowledgeable neuroscientist. You know, with a degree and everything.
At times I find the very act of living difficult. It’s hard to keep forward momentum going. Particularly things that should are basic, unavoidable necessities like cleaning, buying groceries, walking the dog, showing up at work… the very act of going outside is hard. It puts me in range of personal interaction, which is challenging when my brain is sucked in on itself. Having appropriate conversation seems unlikely, so I’d rather remain inside, with my own self, which I can at least depend on me not to surprise me. I have this same problem when things are going particularly well, too – my brain gums up and the more distant you are from my work the more difficult it is to find the right mind-space to have an appropriate conversation. Lewis – easy. Lab mates – decent. Colleagues, cohort – getting more difficult. Everyone else? Seemingly lost. I guess that’s an unintended apology to everyone who thinks I’m turning into an ass. My brain stopped working a couple years ago and I’ve forgotten how to be a real person.
And somehow, I’ve only begun. I’m attempting to write the first paper — just the first paper! — in a very long-haul program. If I can’t knock a 40-pager out over the summer, how am I ever going to tackle the thesis? I feel compelled to add that I’m already behind schedule. This paper was supposed to have been done before summer started. The second paper – the one that qualifies me to write my thesis – is already coming up due this Spring. I try as much as I can not to think about that particular problem, but it looms.
I suppose at this point I’m obliged to get myself back to work. If I’m going to waste every weekend indoors, I might as well try and accomplish something tangible in that time.